(URGENT Information from Friends of Hoi Ha)
Dear All
We need your help to block a housing application at Hoi Ha Wan Tsuen, a village located at Hoi Ha Marine Park which is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Photos are annexed to illustrate the environmentally-damaging nature of this particular Small House Policy exempted house application.
This is urgent. Objections have to be received by the Lands Department before midnight tomorrow (Hong Kong time),
Tuesday 10 September. Please forward to your friends and colleagues and ask them to send letters as a matter of urgency.
I am enclosing an Annex which has photos of the site, to give you an idea of the location and the inappropriateness of building. If this house is approved on a currently uninhabited beach-front location, it will set a bad precedent, and many more applications will be received. A Chief Planner advised against the application at the first hearing, but the Rural Committee approved the application. The last hurdle now rests with the Lands Department at Tai Po. Can you please spread the word and ask all your friends and colleagues to write in and object so that we can save the natural beauty of Hoi Ha for generations to come?
Here are some suggested bullet points. To personalize your letter, may we suggest you add an original introductory statement about why you love Hoi Ha and wish to see its coastline protected from Small House Policy development.
YOUR LETTER - e-mail to: : dlotp@landsd.gov.hk, DLoffice@landsd.gov.hk
Your name and address
9 September 2013
District Lands Officer, Tai Po
1/F Tai Po Government Offices Building
1 Ting Kok Road
Tai Po
NT
HONG KONG
Dear Sir/Madam
Application no: DLO/TP326/TPT/60 for a Small House in DD283, Hoi Ha Village, Sai Kung Country Park
I am writing to object to the above-captioned Small House Policy application at Hoi Ha Village in Sai Kung Country Park. Hoi Ha is fronted by a Marine Park and Site of Special Scientific Interest, and has Country Park on the other 3 sides. It is ecologically of high importance and is an area of outstanding natural beauty. There are too many Adverse Impacts for this application to be granted.
·An original statement from you?
These are the grounds of my objection:
1. PLANNING STUDIES
·Hoi Ha is a Development Permission Area and the area is still awaiting gazetting of the Zoning Plan. No new building should be considered until the Outline Zoning Plan is published. This area may be zoned as Conservation Area in 2 months’ time.
·This site is not within the existing village footprint, it is not within TPB’s proposed V-Zone and should not be considered individually on a haphazard basis but as part of an overall plan for the village within a Comprehensive Development Plan for the area
·Granting of the site would be an undesirable precedent and would open the door for other such environmentally-damaging and landscape-damaging applications behind 2 Marine Park beaches.
·The Small House Policy is undemocratic, riddled with corruption, and environmentally-damaging. This application is for a NTEH – which would be exempt from building regulations. This is not appropriate in such a sensitive site.
·The applicant does not live in the village and is known to few villagers. It is highly unlikely that the applicant will live in the house – it is being built purely to profit from the SHP.
·As Hong Kong Government is a signatory to the Convention On Biological Diversity, the Lands Department has a duty to protect such a protected area as Hoi Ha Marine Park from environmental damage by development
·This site is also a Site of Archaeological Interest as specified by the Antiquities and Monuments Office and must be subject to an Archaeological Impact Assessment by a qualified archaeologist.
2.GEOTECHNICAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT
·The site is on a slope, equidistant between 2 Marine Park beaches. At the bottom of a slope is a seasonally wet grassland which is lapped by Marine Park waters at High Tide.
3. ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT and SEWERAGE IMPACT ASSESSMENT
·It is unlawful to have effluent from a septic tank within 100 metres of a bathing beach and a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Hoi Ha Wan Marine Park is an SSSI, and this site is 30 metres from the SSSI and 2 bathing beaches.
·
It is unlawful to have effluent from a septic tank within 15 metres of a stream. There is a seasonal stream less than 15 metres away from the site. This stream runs into a seasonally-wet grassland which drains into Marine Park waters.
4.VISUAL AND LANDSCAPE IMPACT
·The view from the Marine Park of the hinterland is one of outstanding natural beauty.
·Standing on both the 2 beaches 30 metres away from the application site, there is currently an uninterrupted view of forested hillsides, without a house in sight to spoil this natural visual landscape beauty
·Allowing a house to be built in such a location, so close to 2 beaches, will impact negatively upon the landscape.
5.TREE SURVEY
·It is no longer possible to carry out a tree survey, as the site application and its surrounds were vandalised in July 2012 when trees and shrubs were cleared.
·More trees and shrubs will have to be destroyed in order to build the house and there is no room on the site for mitigation.
·Such vandalism should be punished by disallowing this application and a clear message sent out as a warning that no other plots of Government Land at Hoi Ha are to be trashed before housing applications are made.
6.TRAFFIC (PEDESTRIA) IMPACT
·The application site sits alongside the only footpath out of Hoi Village to 2 bathing beaches at the Marine Park, to the historic Lime Kilns, to the WWF Marine Life Centre and to the Wan Tsai Extension campsites in Sai Kung Country Park.
·This footpath is already gridlocked at peak times and exceeds its carrying capacity
·A new house, which would be the precursor to a housing development between the beaches and footpath, should not be built here – the footpath access is not capable of absorbing additional pedestrian traffic.
7.TRAFFIC (VEHICULAR) Impact
·The village parking spaces are full. The minibus service ie sporadic and so the residents of this house will almost certainly require car parking space.
I urge the Lands Department to refuse this inappropriate development behind the beaches of Hoi Ha Wan Marine Park and Site of Special Scientific Interest, an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Yours faithfully
Your name
ANNEXES-1.docx (395.58 KB)
