Plea to reject airport runway impact study

Green activists yesterday stepped up pressure on the government to reject the environmental impact assessment report on the planned third runway at Chek Lap Kok, questioning the way the government's advisers endorsed the report.

But they said they had not yet decided whether to launch a legal challenge if the report was accepted by the director of environmental protection later this month. The call followed the endorsement by the Advisory Council on the Environment last month of the Airport Authority's study of the assessment.

"I regret the council's decision," Dolphin Conservation Society chairman Dr Samuel Hung Ka-yiu said.

"We just can't accept it. What the authority did was just camouflage to conceal [the fact that it] had nothing to offer at all," he told a special meeting of the Legislative Council's economic development and environmental affairs panel.

The meeting also heard from supporters of the runway - mostly from the aviation and logistics industries - who said Hong Kong would pay a high economic price if the project was dumped.

"We have learned a painful lesson of losing our port business to Shenzhen after we hesitated over whether to build more port terminals," said Pang Chor-fu, an executive director of the Hong Kong Chinese Importers' and Exporters' Association.