Tymon Mellor: If Government documents are to be believed, the inspiration for the Plover Cove Scheme came from the Director of Water Supplies, Mr T O Morgan while swimming in the sea at Plover Cove[i]. His idea was to convert the sea inlet into a fresh water reservoir by damming the inlet, pumping out the sea water and impounding fresh […]
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Photograph of Sam Mun Tsai added. HF: On 2nd March 2015 the SCMP published an article, Hong Kong villagers keep memories of home lost to reservoir afloat. In July 1965 the 400 residents of Sam Mun Tsai were relocated, (the article uses the term ‘evicted’), from their fishing village during the construction of Plover Cove Reservoir which was carried out from […]
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Phillip Edward Kenny added a comment to the article, Lok On Pai ‘desalting’ plant – site visit photographs, suggesting that the HK Urbex Group visit to Lok On Pai ‘desalting’ plant in July 2014 would be of interest. The Hong Kong Urbex (ie Urban Exploration) Group visit, photograph and write about “Hong Kong’s derelict abandoned sites.” They write: “Time and […]
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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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IDj has kindly sent a new China Light and Power video, linked below. The first half focusses on Hong Kong while the remainder is about CLP’s world-wide operations. A Source: CLP’s A Century of Power CLP’s A Century of Power This article was first posted 7th July 2021. Related Indhhk articles: CLP A Century of Light – how power was […]
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Tymon Mellor: The year of 1963 was an exceptionally difficult for water supply in Hong Kong. For the fourteen months between November, 1962 and December, 1963, the total rainfall was only 901mm, as compared with an average expectation of 2,220mm. Severe restrictions were imposed on water consumption with the house supplied service being cut to four hours every fourth day. […]
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Hong Kong Water Supply – Shenzhen Reservoir Tymon Mellor: In the post war Hong Kong, the rapid growth in population and industrialisation brought with it an increase in the demand for water. With improving housing conditions, there was an ever-growing need for additional supply of piped water. Considerable effort had been made to maximise the local resource but continued shortages […]
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With continued water shortages on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, pressure was on the Shek Pik construction team to complete the reservoir as fast as possible. The situation was so bad that during a particularly bad drought in the summer of 1963, the Government hired 13 tankers to ferry water from the Pearl River to a new terminal at Tsuen […]
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IDJ has sent the following newspaper report about a perceived problem with the Shing Mun Reservoir Dam in 1937. The image shown on the Home Page of our article accompanied the original newspaper article, and is not, as you might have thought, a pre-war example of modern art but an attempt at illustrating the “dislodgment of masonry at numerous points” […]
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HF: In 1909 Sir AR Binnie and Son merged with another UK engineering consultancy to become Sir Alexander Binnie, Son and Deacon. Later this company became Binnie & Partners and from the 1990s it has been part of the multi-national Black and Veatch consultancy. Binnie & Partners had a close connection to Hong Kong from 1930. The company was involved […]
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