IDJ has kindly provided this brief history of Hong Kong Electric’s Ap Lei Chau Power Station, together with all of the images shown here which he has collected over the years. IDJ says the book A Mountain of Light, The Story of the Hongkong Electric Company by Austin Coates, says very little about the Ap Lei Chau Power Station apart […]
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“The exact year in which the flight of grantite steps at the southern end of Duddell Street in Central was constructed is not known, but a series of maps of Hong Kong from the period indicate that they came into existence between 1875 and 1889. According to the records of the Hong Kong and China Gas Co., the four gas […]
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James Chan: While walking around the Tai Tam reservoirs on 11th January 2018 I came across a sign on the Tai Tam Waterworks Heritage Trail, see below, which began: “Before the 1860s, Hong Kong relied on primitive sources such as wells and streams for its water supply. Although the Pok Fu Lam Reservoir, the first rainwater facility, was enlarged in […]
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HF: “The third reservoir in Hong Kong, the Wong Nai Chung Reservoir, was built at Tai Tam Reservoir Road in Wong Nai Chung in 1899. The reservoir dam followed the topography of the valley. It was 50 feet high, 270 feet long and was boomerang-shaped. The reservoir had a small water storage capacity of just 27 million gallons, only 38% […]
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Additional information plus several images added. Special thanks to IDJ. Contributors: Amelia Allsop, HF and IDJ. Amelia kindly personally sent the two drawn images shown here and gave permission for other images to be used in this article. Amelia was, at that time, the Manager – Research and Business Communications, at the Hong Kong Heritage Project. In 1903 China Light […]
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Tymon Mellor: The year of 1921 was a good year for the growing population of Hong Kong Island; it would be the last year[i] until 1982 when there were no more water shortages[ii]. With the completion of the Tai Tam Tuk reservoir in 1917, doubling the total water capacity, the Colonial Government was confident there would be a sufficient water […]
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Chris added the following information in a comment on 3rd May 2024. ”I asked the same question and received a reply from the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department today (3rd May 2024). There is only one location that the FEHD is providing conservancy services (night soil collection): Temporary toilet at Po Chong Wan Temporary Area, Aberdeen, Hong Kong. It appears […]
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IDJ has sent this 1997 article published on behalf of the HK Academy of Engineering Sciences and HK Institution of Engineers. “In 1989 Hong Kong Electric pioneered the introduction of mechanised tunnelling to Hong Kong, accepting the only bid that proposed the use of a tunnel boring machine for the construction of a 5.7 kilometre, 5 metre diameter cable tunnel […]
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Hong Kong Water Supply – The East River Scheme Tymon Mellor: Following the failure of the 1963 summer rains, it was clear that Hong Kong needed additional sources of drinking water. With no natural major rivers, the obvious choice was to extract water from the East River, some 60km north of Hong Kong (now known as the Dongjiang River) and […]
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Tymon Mellor: We take for granted that when we turn a tap on clean water will flow. However, for the majority of Hong Kong’s colonial history, there were water shortages and supply restrictions. This was not a result of poor policy decisions but of changing circumstances, financial limitations and geographical constraints, and unlike other major conurbations, Hong Kong has no […]
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