Information class: |
Standard |
This document is issued for the party which commissioned it and for specific purposes connected with the above-captioned project only. It should not be relied upon by any other party or used for any other purpose. We accept no responsibility for the consequences of this document being relied upon by any other party, or being used for any other purpose, or containing any error or omission which is due to an error or omission in data supplied to us by other parties. This document contains confidential information and proprietary intellectual property. It should not be shown to other parties without consent from us and from the party which commissioned it. |
|
Contents
1.3
Environmental Status and Programme
2
Chinese White Dolphin Monitoring
3
Landscape Establishment Monitoring
Tables
Table 1.1: Contact Information of Key
Personnel
Table 2.1: Co-ordinates of Transect
Lines in WL Survey Area
Table 2.2: Dolphin encounter rates per
set in WL survey area during the reporting period
Figures
Figure
1
Transect Line Layout in West Lantau Survey Area
Appendices
Appendix A
Project Organisation for Environmental Works
Appendix B
Chinese White Dolphin Monitoring Results
Appendix
C
Monitoring Schedule
Appendix D
Landscape Establishment Monitoring Checklist
This Monthly Environmental
Monitoring and Audit (EM&A) Report is prepared for “Agreement No. HMWSD
1/2019 (EP) Post-Construction Monitoring of Chinese White Dolphin
(Line-transect Vessel Surveys) for the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Hong Kong
Link Road at West Lantau Waters – Investigation” (hereafter referred to as “the
Assignment”) for the Highways Department of Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region (HKSAR).
Mott MacDonald Hong Kong Limited
was appointed by the Highways Department of HKSAR to undertake the
Environmental Team services for this Assignment for the post-construction
monitoring of Chinese White Dolphin in West Lantau waters for the Hong
Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Hong Kong Link Road Project.
This is the Monthly EM&A
Report for the 13th month of the post-construction phase of the
Project which summarises findings of the post-construction EM&A activities
during the reporting period from 1 to 30 November 2019.
Environmental Monitoring and Audit Progress
A summary of the
post-construction monitoring activities during the reporting period is listed as
below:
● Chinese White Dolphin Monitoring
(Line-transect Vessel Surveys): 4 and 26 November 2019
● Landscape establishment monitoring (bi-monthly, conducted for Contract No. HY/2011/09 by other parties): 29 November 2019
The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge
(HZMB) Hong Kong Link Road (HKLR) is a designated project under the
Environmental Impact Assessment Ordinance (EIAO). The Environmental
Impact Assessment (EIA) Report and Environmental Monitoring and Audit
(EM&A) Manual (EIA Register No.: AEIAR-144/2009) for the project were
approved by the Director of Environmental Protection in October 2009 and the
Environmental Permit No. EP-352/2009 (EP) was issued in November 2009. The
EP has been subject to several variations and the current one is EP No.
EP-352/2009/D.
The HZMB HKLR was constructed
under two works contracts namely Contract No. HY/2011/03 (HZMB HKLR – Section
between Scenic Hill and Hong Kong Boundary Crossing Facilities (HKBCF)) and
Contract No. HY/2011/09 (HZMB HKLR – Section between HKSAR Boundary and Scenic
Hill). In accordance with the EP, the Contractors of Contract No.
HY/2011/03 and Contract No. HY/2011/09 have separately employed their own
Environmental Team (ET) and ET Leader to conduct construction phase monitoring
of Chinese White Dolphin (CWD) in the North Lantau (NL) and West Lantau (WL)
waters following the requirements specified in the EM&A Manual and the
relevant contract specifications of the two contracts.
In accordance with Section 10.3
of the EM&A Manual, an ecological monitoring and audit programme is needed
which will monitor potential impacts through construction and operation activities, and will verify the assessments which were made
in the EIA report. In particular, the programme should include dolphin
monitoring at NL and WL waters to be set up in order to verify the predictions
of impacts and to ensure that there are no unforeseen impacts on the dolphin
population during construction phase. Such dolphin monitoring should
cover the pre-construction phase, the entire period of construction phase and
after the completion of construction works (i.e. post-construction phase). In
accordance with Section 14.2.1 of the EM&A Manual, mitigation measures for
landscape and visual impacts implemented during construction phase should be
checked every 2 months to ensure compliance with the intended aims throughout
the one-year landscape establishment period in the post-construction phase.
The main objective of the current
Assignment commissioned by the Highways Department (HyD)
is to conduct Post-Construction Monitoring of CWD in WL waters in compliance
with the requirements stipulated in the EM&A Manual and the EP for the HZMB
HKLR Project. The post-construction monitoring of CWD should be conducted
for two years upon the completion of all marine-based construction activities.
The marine-based construction
activities for the Contract No. HY/2011/09 was completed in October 2018.
Subsequently, 10 months of post-construction dolphin monitoring had been
carried out by the Contract, while the remaining 14 months of post-construction
dolphin monitoring will be completed under this Assignment, from 1 September
2019 to 31 October 2020.
In August 2019, Mott MacDonald
Hong Kong Limited was appointed by the HyD to
undertake the Environmental Team (ET) services for this Assignment for the
post-construction monitoring of CWD in WL waters for the HZMB HKLR Project.
This is the Monthly EM&A Report for the 13th month of the
post-construction phase of the Project summarising the findings of the
post-construction EM&A activities during the reporting period from 1 to 30
November 2019 and is submitted to fulfil Condition 4.4 of the EP.
The project organisation and
lines of communication with respect to the environmental management structure
are shown in Appendix A. The
key personnel contact names and numbers are summarised in Table
1.1.
Table 1.1:
Contact Information of Key Personnel
Party |
Position |
Name |
Telephone |
Fax |
Permit Holder (HyD) |
Engineer |
Ms. Karen Ho |
2762 4979 |
3188 6614 |
Environmental Project Office / Independent Environmental Checker (Ramboll Hong Kong Limited) |
Environmental Project Office Leader |
Mr. Y H Hui |
3465 2888 |
3465 2899 |
Independent Environmental Checker |
Mr. Ray Yan |
3465 2836 |
3465 2899 |
|
Environmental Team (Mott MacDonald Hong Kong Limited) |
Environmental Team Leader |
Mr. Gary Chow |
2828 5874 |
2827 1823 |
As described in Section 1.1, the
current Assignment is under the post-construction phase of the HZMB HKLR
Project with all marine-based construction activities completed, thus there
were no construction works involved.
The CWD monitoring programme
covers all transect lines in WL survey area (refer to Figure 1) for twice
per month throughout the entire post-construction monitoring period for two
years. The current reporting period is the 13th month of the
post-construction CWD monitoring.
The CWD monitoring and bi-monthly
landscape establishment monitoring schedule involved in this reporting period
is provided in Appendix C.
Tentative schedule of the planned CWD monitoring works in the next reporting
period is also provided in Appendix C.
Landscape monitoring has been conducted by other parties for Contract No. HY/2011/09 since July 2019 with a monitoring programme for once in bi-monthly intervals throughout the landscape establishment period for one year. The 3rd bi-monthly landscape establishment monitoring covering November 2019 to December 2019 has been conducted in this reporting period. The landscape establishment monitoring checklist, soft landscape layout plans and photographic records are provided in Appendix D.
According to the requirement
stated in the EM&A Manual, a CWD monitoring programme was set up to conduct
surveys for twice per month adopting the line-transect vessel survey method and
covering the following transect lines in the West Lantau (WL) survey area as in
the AFCD long-term marine mammal monitoring programme.
The CWD monitoring works were
undertaken by a dedicated survey team comprising qualified dolphin specialist
and experienced CWD surveyors. The qualified dolphin specialist was approved by
the AFCD and EPD.
The location of the WL survey
area and all transect lines are depicted in Figure 1. The
co-ordinates of all transect lines are shown in Table 2.1.
Table 2.1: Co-ordinates of Transect Lines in WL
Survey Area
Line No. |
Easting |
Northing |
|
Line No. |
Easting |
Northing |
||
1 |
Start Point |
803750 |
818500 |
|
7 |
Start Point |
800200 |
810450 |
1 |
End Point |
803750 |
815500 |
|
7 |
End Point |
801400 |
810450 |
2 |
Start Point |
803750 |
815500 |
|
8 |
Start Point |
801300 |
809450 |
2 |
End Point |
802940 |
815500 |
|
8 |
End Point |
799750 |
809450 |
3 |
Start Point |
802550 |
814500 |
|
9 |
Start Point |
799400 |
808450 |
3 |
End Point |
803700 |
814500 |
|
9 |
End Point |
801430 |
808450 |
4 |
Start Point |
803120 |
813600 |
|
10 |
Start Point |
801500 |
807450 |
4 |
End Point |
801640 |
813600 |
|
10 |
End Point |
799600 |
807450 |
5 |
Start Point |
801100 |
812450 |
|
11 |
Start Point |
800300 |
806500 |
5 |
End Point |
802900 |
812450 |
|
11 |
End Point |
801750 |
806500 |
6 |
Start Point |
802400 |
811500 |
|
12 |
Start Point |
801760 |
805450 |
6 |
End Point |
800660 |
811500 |
|
12 |
End Point |
800700 |
805450 |
The following monitoring protocol
is consistent and compatible with the baseline and construction phase dolphin
monitoring methodology, which was also designed and adopted by the Hong Kong
Cetacean Research Project (HKCRP) team for the HZMB monitoring since 2011.
The survey team used standard
line-transect methods (Buckland et al. 2001) to conduct the systematic vessel
surveys, and followed the same technique of data collection that has been
adopted over the past two decades of marine mammal monitoring surveys in Hong
Kong developed by HKCRP (see Hung 2018, 2019). For each monitoring vessel
survey, a 15-m inboard vessel with an open upper deck (about 4.5 m above water
surface) was used to make observations from the flying bridge area.
Two experienced observers (a data
recorder and a primary observer) made up the on-effort survey team, and the
survey vessel transited through different transect lines at a constant speed of
13-15 km per hour. The data recorder searched with unaided eyes and
filled out the datasheets, while the primary observer searched for CWD
continuously through 7 x 50 Fujinon marine
binoculars. Both observers searched the sea ahead of the vessel, between
270o and 90o (in relation to the bow, which is defined as
0o). One to two additional experienced observers were
available on the boat to work in shift (i.e. rotate every 30 minutes) in order
to minimize fatigue of the survey team members. All observers are
experienced in small cetacean survey techniques and identifying local cetacean
species.
During on-effort survey periods,
the survey team recorded effort data including time, position (latitude and
longitude), weather conditions (Beaufort sea state and visibility), and
distance travelled in each series (a continuous period of search effort) with
the assistance of a handheld GPS (Garmin eTrex).
Data including time, position and vessel speed were automatically and
continuously logged by a handheld GPS throughout the entire survey for
subsequent review.
When dolphins were sighted, the
survey team would end the survey effort, and immediately record the initial
sighting distance and angle of the dolphin group from the survey vessel, as
well as the sighting time and position. Then, the research vessel would be
diverted from its course to approach the animals for species identification,
group size estimation, assessment of group composition, and behavioural
observations. The perpendicular distance (PSD) of the dolphin group to
the transect line would later be calculated from the initial sighting distance
and angle.
Survey effort being conducted
along the parallel transect lines that were perpendicular to the coastlines (as
indicated in Figure 1)
was labelled as “primary” survey effort, while the survey effort being
conducted along the connecting lines between parallel lines was labelled as
“secondary” survey effort. According to HKCRP long-term dolphin
monitoring data, encounter rates of CWD deduced from effort and sighting data
collected along primary and secondary lines have been similar in survey areas
around Lantau Island. Therefore, both primary and secondary survey effort
were presented as on-effort survey effort.
Encounter rates of CWD (number of
on-effort sightings per 100 km of survey effort) were calculated in WL survey
area in relation to the amount of survey effort conducted during each month of
monitoring survey. Only data collected under Beaufort 3 or below
condition would be used for encounter rate analysis. Dolphin encounter
rates were calculated using primary survey effort alone, as well as the
combined survey effort from both primary and secondary lines.
When a group of CWD was sighted
during the line-transect survey, the survey team would end effort and approach
the group slowly from the side and behind to take photographs of them.
Every attempt was made to photograph every dolphin in the group, and even
photograph both sides of the dolphins whenever possible, since the colouration
and markings on both sides may not be symmetrical.
At least one professional digital
camera (Canon EOS 7D model) equipped with long telephoto lens (100-400 mm zoom)
was available on board for researchers to take sharp, close-up photographs of
dolphins as they surface. The images were shot at the highest available
resolution and stored on Compact Flash memory cards for downloading onto a
computer.
All digital images taken in the
field were first examined, and those containing potentially identifiable
individuals were sorted out. These photographs were then examined in
greater detail, and were carefully compared to the
existing CWD photo-identification catalogue maintained by HKCRP since
1995. CWDs can be identified by their natural markings, such as nicks,
cuts, scars and deformities on their dorsal fin and body, and their unique spotting
patterns can also be used as secondary identifying features (Jefferson
2000).
All photographs of each individual were then compiled and arranged in
chronological order, with data including the date and location first identified
(initial sighting), re-sightings, associated dolphins, distinctive features,
and age classes entered into a computer database.
Two sets of systematic line-transect
vessel surveys were conducted on 4 and 26 November 2019, to cover all transect
lines in WL survey area twice. The survey routes of each survey day are
presented in Figures 2 to 3 of Appendix
B.
A total of 67.22 km of survey
effort was collected, with 92.0% of total survey effort being conducted under
favourable weather conditions (i.e. Beaufort Sea State 3 or below with good
visibility), as detailed in Appendix B.
Out of the 67.22 km of survey effort, the total survey effort conducted on
primary lines was 44.65 km, while the effort on secondary lines was 22.57 km.
During the two sets of monitoring
surveys, three groups of 15 CWDs were sighted. All dolphin groups were
sighted on primary lines (refer to sighting data presented in Appendix B). None of these
dolphin groups was associated with operating fishing vessel.
Distribution of the dolphin
sightings made in the reporting period is shown in Figure 4 of Appendix B. Two of the three
sightings were made to the west and southwest of Peaked Hill, while another
sighting was a large group of 12 dolphins made just north of the HKLR section
alignment.
Encounter rates of CWD deduced
from the survey effort and on-effort sighting data made under favourable
conditions (Beaufort 3 or below) are shown in Table 2.2
and Table 2.3.
Table 2.2: Dolphin encounter rates per set in WL
survey area during the reporting period
Survey Area |
Survey Set |
Encounter rate (STG) |
Encounter rate (ANI) |
|
|
Primary Lines Only |
Primary Lines Only |
West Lantau (WL) |
Set 1: November 4th, 2019 |
5.3 |
5.3 |
Set 2: November 26th, 2019 |
4.4 |
53.2 |
Table 2.3: Overall dolphin encounter rates on primary
lines only as well as both primary and secondary lines in WL survey area during
the reporting period
Survey Area |
Encounter rate (STG) |
Encounter rate (ANI) |
||
|
Primary Lines Only |
Both Primary and Secondary Lines |
Primary Lines Only |
Both Primary and Secondary Lines |
West Lantau (WL) |
4.8 |
3.2 |
31.4 |
21.0 |
The average group size of CWDs was
5.0 dolphins per group. Two of the three dolphin sightings consisted of 1-2
animals per group while the remaining sighting was a large group which
consisted of 12 animals.
A total of 12 different
individual CWDs were identified for 12 times during surveys in this reporting
period, with details presented in Appendix
B. All 12 animals were sighted within the large group encountered
on 26 November 2019.
According to the requirement
stated in the EM&A Manual, landscape establishment monitoring should be
carried out every two months for checking of the planting works during the
1-year establishment period. Measures to mitigate landscape and visual impacts
should be checked to ensure compliance with the intended aims of the measures.
The monitoring was conducted by other parties for Contract No. HY/2011/09.
The monitoring areas locate along
South Perimeter Road and Chek Lap Kok
South Road, near Scenic Road and a small section of Airport Road and Kwo Lo Wan Road. Locations of the monitoring areas are
shown in the Drawing no. HKLR9/MMH/DDA/AI/LS/00100 of Appendix D.
Landscape establishment
monitoring covering November and December 2019 was conducted on 29 November
2019. The observations made during this reporting period are as follows:
Viaduct between P112 and P114
● The groundcovers (Catharanthus
roseus and Lantana montevidensis) were
observed to be in poor health or dead. The Contractor was reminded to review
the health condition of all groundcovers and re-planted if necessary.
● Weeds and unwanted plants were
observed. The Contractor was reminded to remove them and replant the approved
species for groundcovers according to the approved plan.
Kwo Lo Wan
Road
● Some Phoenix roebelenii
were removed. The Contractor was reminded to re-plant them according to the
approved plan.
Airport Road
● Weeds and unwanted plants were
observed. In addition, the Phoenix roebelenii
are also in poor health or dead. The Contractor was reminded to remove the
weeds and unwanted plants to ensure the healthy establishment of the target
species accordingly.
Portion A
● Some trees (Phoenix roebelenii) and shrubs (Rhododendron pulchrum) were observed to be in poor health or dead.
The Contractor was reminded to review the health of all trees and shrubs and
replace them if confirmed dead.
Based on the observations, the
contractor was reminded to review the health condition of the plants, remove
weeds and replant approved plants as needed to meet the aim of the mitigation
measures proposed during EIA stage, i.e. provide proper planting maintenance on
the new planting areas to enhance the aesthetic degree.
The landscape establishment monitoring checklist, monitoring photos and locations of trees selected for monitoring are provided in Appendix D.
Post-construction EM&A works
including the monitoring of CWD and landscape establishment were conducted in
accordance with the EM&A Manual during the reporting period.
In this month of
post-construction monitoring of CWD in WL waters, vessel surveys were conducted
on 4 and 26 November 2019 covering all transect lines in WL survey area for
twice. A total of 67.22 km of survey effort was collected, with three groups of
15 CWDs were sighted. All marine-based construction activities have been
completed and as a result, no adverse impact on CWD was observed from the HZMB
HKLR works.
Bi-monthly landscape
establishment monitoring was conducted on 29 November 2019. Five observations
were made regarding trees and shrubs found in poor health condition and weeds
found in planter areas. The contractor was reminded to review the health
condition of all vegetation and replace them if confirmed dead, as well as to
remove the weeds and replant approved species for groundcover accordingly to
ensure healthy establishment of target species.