Activist puts case for artificial beach review

A green activist has asked the High Court to adopt "heightened scrutiny" of a government decision to build a beach in Tai Po that she says is likely to endanger the life of a rare seahorse.

Ho Loy is seeking leave for a judicial review in order to halt the artificial beach project at Lung Mei, where spotted seahorses, classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, have been seen.

Ho, a member of the Save Lung Mei Alliance, complained that the director of the Environmental Protection Department and the Chief Executive in Council failed to exercise their discretion to suspend or cancel an environmental permit granted to the department after the sightings were recorded. Nicholas Cooney SC, for Ho, said the court should adopt heightened scrutiny of the government decision because this case involved "the most worthwhile goal" of protecting the ecology.

Cooney compared the case to a high-profile judicial review mounted by Victoria Harbour conservationists against controversial Central reclamation in 2004.

When the department applied for the permit in 2010, it provided "misleading, wrong, incomplete or false" information, he said. He noted spotted seahorses were first seen at Lung Mei in 2009, a year after approval of an environmental impact assessment report on the project.

The report was flawed, however, because a study had found the rare species existed in waters nearby, he said. This meant an assessment of the impact on the seahorse should have been done at Lung Mei even though there was no sighting of it at that time.

The report said Lung Mei had "mainly low-quality habitats" that did not appear to be "critical or unique habitats for species of conservation importance", nor did it support significant populations of such species.