Zippy,
thanks for the pictures.
I sent them to DSD and am waiting for their explanation.
They are seeking legal advice against Mr.Fong because his dumping activities have increased the risk of flooding and therefore compromised the effectiveness of the horrible nullah they built.
In an ideal world the court would force Mr. Fong to remove the construction waste, and pay damages to the DSD (whose men had to remove piles of black and stinky sludge last week). But this is HK, therefore i am not holding my breath.

Lots more construction waste -- chunks of concrete, smashed toilets and cisterns, bits of electrical fittings, and more sand, have been added to the pile in the last week or so.

Also, I'm bit concerned that the next block downstream seems to have had its vegetation cleared. Could there be a stage II coming?

Maybe they would like to plant a lawn?

Perhaps the powers that be have realised the ultimate infeasibility of cementing the Yung Shue Long Valley in its entirety and have resigned themselves to 'developing' some areas as pesticide, herbicide, chemical fertiliser, and water hungry monocultures of creeping red fescue?

We may all celebrate when a super-large fluorescent fibreglass sculpture of a tree frog is erected in the YSL Valley Piazza. We shall all enjoy unsurpassed convenience when the 'Lamma Mart Plaza' is up and running with its Denny's restaurant, Blockbuster video outlet, and . . . wait for it. . . . Wallmart super box store! Hurrah for progress, and we hope all inconvenient life forms will soon be eradicated!

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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
----- Margaret Mead

What a dogs dinner they are making of the place. Anyone with half a brain could have told them that once the rain starts there'll be flooding. What will happen when there's a large downpour over a sustained period? Also, those barriers, they seem to be have been 'dumped' over the hole. As someone pointed out earlier, they don't have the appearance of having been 'officially erected'. It's certainly a hazard. I wonder if a small child fell down the hole, accidentally of course, the authorities might sit up and take more notice. Anyone got a kid (or pensioner) they want to sacrifice for the greater good?

Yes, looks very ad hoc. An official works would have put up a temporary boardwalk.

The path is almost completey blocked, just a couple of inches to walk past or go in the mud puddle.

All the Tai Peng people going home tonight in the rain, pushing prams, riding bikes, etc, will be pleased.

DSD (whose men had to remove piles of black and stinky sludge last week

I think the sludge has definitely got rapidly worse since the dumping. It has also started to smell horrible, which it never did before.

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In all honesty, I don't think the black sludge has anything to do with the dumping - as muchy as it would support our resistance to prove it did. I think it's from sewage and grease trap outflow from the restaurants on main street. When the tide is high it cleans the horrible sewage outflow that is less often rinsed away and turns the water in the whole didtch black. I worked in restaurants many years ago and they all have a horrible nasty thing called a grease trap that must be cleaned periodically. The snmell and appearance is just like that horrible black water and residue that u can see in the ditch at high tide.

_________________
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
----- Margaret Mead

I tend to agree with Tavis r/e the black sludge. I noticed the DSD/WSD signs had gone this morning and a boardwalk had appeared seemingly overnight.

You're right Tavis, it does smell like a grease trap (I've had the misfortune of cleaning far too many of them too ), but I still don't understand why it only started to smell recently (and not last year in the heat). Anyway, I don't think we should get too sidetracked.

The whole monstrosity is an eyesore, was almost certainly unnecessary and actually appears to have created more problems than it solved (in fact it appears to have solved nothing and is now redundant due to the restricted flow through the small diameter pipe put in place through the dumpsite.

So IF DSD are responsible for the recent works, then it seems that they are prepared to waste even more of the taxpayer's money to fix new problems created by the selfish developer's dumping! I'll bet it was the developer or one of his cronies who brought the need for a new channel to DSD's attention. Ridiculous!

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Close to half a dozen complaints to the Lands department about illegal dumping on Lamma's path verges near Po Wah Yuen spurred them into action a year after the first call was made.

They prioritise the urgency behind each complaint but even they don't know how long it will take to act on the dumping in the valley.

There are laws that work in favour of the dumpers and there are laws that will work in favour of all the good people that want the valley back to the way it was. We need to prepare for the long fight because this is not going to go away any time soon BECAUSE of the law.

Btw, what is Yue Lai Fan's, our beloved councillor, stand point?

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Her standpoint hasn't changed as far as I know, since she got visited by quite a few people when the dumping started, incl. myself:

"It's private land, we can't do anything, not my responsibility!"

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Useless b*tch !

This guy was finishing off the construction of the new u-channel across the path on Saturday afternoon. I now strongly suspect that DSD had nothing to do with it and the person responsible for the dumping just used stolen DSD barriers (1 is now sitting up the side of the nearby bin station).

_________________
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I can totally understand your feelings Zippy. But she's just a product of the system and its history. She knows which side her bread is buttered on and probably does care a fig what names she's called by some environmentalists, who she easily dismisses as a bunch of troublesome gweilos. From what I've heard she has a view that non-locals don't have any business meddling in local politics. One British fellow who's been here 30 years or so once told a story of a time when she was a volunteer at election time many years ago. When she saw this Caucasian fellow prepare to cast his ballot she made some derogatory remark about gweilos in Cantonese assuming that he was unable to understand. But he did understand. Apparently she felt he shouldn't have had the right to vote. She's not going to change her stripes and for the time being she doesn't have to - the system and culture at large supports her in that office.

She is not the one we should be angering at - it's the system at large that needs to be radically reformed. It needs to be understood that rule of law applies uniformly in all parts of Hong Kong. But for now we live in a society that acknowledges and respects special privileges for many different identifiable groups of people, both explicitly in law and through unspoken tradition. It will take time to change this.

I've also had the thoughts that that diversion work was not instigated or carried out by a public department. It has all the appearances of having been done by private interests who have access to to the tools and supplies used in genuine publics works projects. Probably because they own a construction company that regularly carries out such works and that for them ownership and jurisdictional boundaries have become very fuzzy because the system has always allowed the powerful to violate those boundaries. I've noticed other people who seem otherwise to be quite honest, thinking nothing of stealing construction supplies and equipment. I have had the impression that some local people seem to consider this sort of thing to almost constitute some kind of a privilage - some sort of tax they are allowed to impose upon the government as unspoken payment for conceding to government 'rule' within their local fiefdoms.

_________________
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
----- Margaret Mead

probably does care a fig what names she's called by some environmentalists, who she easily dismisses as a bunch of troublesome gweilos.

Agree with all you said Tavis. Although I remember from the SCMP pic/article there being quite a few irate Chinese re; the dumping. I think if we act as a community on this rather than two separate factions ('troublesome gweilos' being one faction) she's not going to be able to dismiss us quite so easily. Perhaps we need a local Chinese to act as official liason. Is there anything on the Chinese threads about this Lamma-Gung?

Pointless wasting time on her, even if she was inclined to help, and she obviously never will be.

Albert Chan is a Legco member, has far more influence and power than her. He has got responses from all the concerned departments. Who have achieved very little, unfortuately. The laws are quite toothless and seem designed to have large loopholes allowing these kind of abuses.

Yes, there's been a quite active Chin.discussion about this topic till about 1 month ago, with most members upset and outraged:

http://www.lamma.com.hk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6596

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What many people worried about has happened this morning. The small-diameter pipe inside the construction waste dump was not able to handle the torrential rains, while the natural river upstream and the new drainage channel downstream had no problems at all.

The entire farmland in the Yung Shue Long valley got flooded, probably as a result of the undersized and/or blocked pipe acting as a bottleneck. A few photos:

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Who would be the relevant department to contact to point out that their million dollar drainage system doesn't appear to be working? At least, it may have worked but thanks to dumping of construction materials it now appears to have been a complete waste of money and effort? Might also be worth sending the pics to the SCMP journalist that wrote the first story. It would make a good follow up for a Sunday when they're usually desperate for stories.

Unfortunately, the reporter who worked on the story, Bryony Taylor, has left Hong Kong and no longer works at the SCMP. I've written to her asking who at the paper might be interested in covering these new developments.