a splash of colour

Luen Wo Hui is a district in eastern Fanling bounded by the triangle of Sha Tau Kok Road to the south, Fan Leng Lau Road to the west, and Ma Sik Road to the north and east. Ma Sik Road has precisely demarcated the eastern boundary of Fanling for as long as I’ve lived here, although construction work started recently east of the road, and if I live long enough, I expect to see development extend as far east as the Ma Wat River and as far north as the Ng Tung River.

I walk into Luen Wo Hui almost every day from the village where I live, a distance of just over a mile. At one point, the path takes me over a footbridge across the Ma Wat River, and I always look over the upstream side of the bridge to check out the confluence of the main river with a small storm drain coming in from the side.

The reason for my curiosity is that for as long as I can remember, hundreds of fish have used this point as a spawning ground, lining up nose to tail facing upstream. However, a couple of years ago, large quantities of mud began to be deposited where the storm drain runs into the river’s winter channel (all the rivers in this area have been canalized to prevent flooding, so the limited flow that occurs during the dry season is confined to a narrow channel).

The origin of the mud is small-scale construction upstream. And when the water in the storm drain hits the water coming down the winter channel, it is held up, so the mud can no longer remain in suspension. A similar phenomenon occurs about 100 metres downstream, where the Ma Wat River joins the Ng Tung River. Despite the former nominally being the tributary, it is the latter that is backed up by the force of the flow in the former, which is probably a reflection of the relative gradients in the two channels.

Although a small amount of mud washes downstream, the rest is dumped here, but despite this less than conducive environment for the fish, they seemed to be persevering with their spawning activities. Perhaps there haven’t been quite as many fish, but it hasn’t been possible to accurately quantify such an assertion.

However, a few days ago, I was crossing the bridge, and before I’d even looked closely, I could sense that something was amiss:

Some kind of hydrocarbon pollution was washing down the river (top to bottom in the photo). Upstream, the river passes through Fanling’s industrial zone, and it isn’t difficult to guess the origin of this material. What is less certain—although it’s an assertion that I feel confident in making—is whether the discharge into the drainage system was accidental or deliberate. I say deliberate, although it would have been through ignorance rather than malice. The same could probably be said of the mud. Washing it down the drainage system rather than trying to contain it on site is probably being done because it doesn’t occur to those responsible that they may be creating a problem.

Obviously, there’s nothing I can do about any of this, apart from complaining publicly, but regular readers will know that I often use hydrocarbon pollution as a vehicle for a kind of abstract art. This is what I came up with on this occasion:

I took several photos at 10–15-second intervals as the pollution washed past. Obviously, I’ve cranked up the contrast and the colour saturation, and this is the best I could do.