Court hears challenge over golf course plan

The High Court on Thursday started hearing a bid to overturn the government's approval of an environmental study into plans to build public flats on part of the Hong Kong Golf Club course. Senior Counsel Benjamin Yu, for the club, told the court that the Environmental Impact Assessment had a lot of deficiencies. He argued that the government had said it would identify trees on the golf course that could be classified as old and valuable, but no such findings were included in the environmental report. The barrister said this is "vital" to the whole judicial review. Yu also said a public consultation exercise had not been carried out properly or fairly, since authorities had been allowed to submit additional information during the assessment, but people's responses to the submissions were not taken into account. He said had the club had the opportunity to give further comments, it could have pointed out that an additional study was not comprehensive in assessing the development’s impact on the aquatic habitats at the site. The lawyer noted that critically endangered Chinese Swamp Cypress trees on the golf course are sensitive to hydrological changes, and authorities should tread extra carefully when it is not known how the trees could be affected. Judge Russell Coleman said the environment should be given “the benefit of the doubt” and should be protected in such situations. Yu said the report also underrated the site's ecological value, by severely underestimating the different types of bats living there. He said the report only mentioned one bat species, when a separate study carried out by the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department found 17. Yu added that the golf course, which is more than 100 years old, should be regarded as a site of cultural heritage, even though it is not a declared monument. He said it is “odd” that the environmental review concluded that the immediate impact of building on the old golf course was “undetermined” when there would be direct changes and heritage would be destroyed. The government took back 32 hectares of the golf course last year, with a plan to build public housing flats on nine hectares of the land. The High Court last year suspended the environmental review on an interim basis so the site could be preserved pending this hearing which is set to continue on Friday.