The Hong Kong Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society (HKDCS) is accusing Macao’s environmental authority of doubling the size of areas frequented by Chinese white dolphins in its maps, the Macau Daily Times reports.
The group claims that the maps imply the dolphins inhabit a larger swathe of sea than they do in reality, which could help sell the government’s proposed landfill alternative off Hac Sa Beach to the public.
“The [Environmental Protection] bureau is still declining to admit the fundamental fact that the future landfill will block the passages of the dolphin,” it said in a translation of a Facebook post made by the Times. “The narrow relocation passages located on the south of Coloane and the west of the Pearl River Estuary … have suddenly become very wide in the diagram.” The Times did not mention any response from the bureau.
[See more: ‘We will not dump solid waste into the sea,’ the government says]
HKDCS’s use of the term “future landfill” refers to a proposed artificial island to be built out of construction refuse off Hac Sa Beach – a stop-gap solution for disposing of such waste, as Macao’s landfill has reached capacity.
While the project has cautious approval from some groups (and overt support from Beijing), environmentalists have slammed it as an ecological disaster waiting to happen, not to mention a blight on one of Macao’s most scenic areas.
The government, meanwhile, has defended the island as environmentally sound while noting that other options may not exist.
