The government should not be blamed for problems that environmental advisers found in a report on the ecological impact of building 12,000 flats on a private golf course in northern Hong Kong, the head of the review panel has told the Post.

Stanley Wong Yuen-fai, the chairman of the Advisory Council on the Environment, on Saturday said it would be unfair to call the compilation of the environmental impact assessment report “sloppy”.

Members postponed the decision on Friday as they could only agree that many questions about the government’s methodologies used in the report remained unsolved, he said. Some of the additional information requested will take at least seven months to collect, according to the council, so the review will be passed to new members who will take up their roles in January.

“But it’s not fair to say the government did a sloppy job. Methodologies adopted by government-commissioned consultants can vary a lot, and Hong Kong lacks experts in bats and moths,” he said, referring to animals that could be affected by the housing plan for the site in Fanling.

Deputy council chairwoman Professor Nora Tam and chairman Stanley Wong meet the press after announcing no decision had been made on approving the environmental impact report on Friday.

While some results provided in the report were “not unacceptable”, most members hoped for more information from authorities to ensure ecological surveys were representative and comprehensive, he added.

Wong’s view was echoed by his deputy Nora Tam Fung-yee, an emeritus professor of chemistry at City University, who said that although the government made efforts to satisfy the statutory requirements with its studies, some surveys were conducted without following basic field guidelines.

The data provided on birds in the area was especially problematic, she said, noting an absence of information about their daily habits before 10am. Members had suggested the government collect more data on birds during the wet and dry seasons up until March, the academic noted.

Replantation of trees was another major concern of the advisers, Tam explained, as authorities had failed to provide a concrete plan for making up for the hundreds that would be removed to make way for the housing estates. Members also wanted studies on the layout of the estates, the effects of artificial lighting and the hydrology of the site.

The proposal calls for building flats for 33,600 on 32 hectares of the 172-hectare golf course, managed by the exclusive Hong Kong Golf Club. The previous government had hoped to finish construction by 2029, but politicians and business elites, including club members, have renewed their opposition to the plan.

Among them is Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, convenor of the Executive Council, the government’s key decision-making body, who said the plan was not cost-effective and would destroy the area’s ecology.

On Saturday, both Wong and Tam denied they had been influenced by opponents of the project.

“Our decisions was not influenced by politicians. The only pressure I had was from whether we could leverage the pros and cons of the project in aspects of environmental protection and conservation,” Wong said.

The chairman revealed the council’s members were deeply divided in meetings on Thursday and Friday. At first, about half of them supported endorsing the report with conditions, but they were later convinced by the others that more information was needed.

Wong, who will have served six years when his second term expires at the end of 2022, also denied passing the buck to his successor and maintained that the council’s decision was a collective one. He predicted the next chairman would carefully examine the new information when it was ready and would not “straightly endorse the plan”.

But Ng Hei-man, campaign manager of the Conservancy Association, said the council’s postponement of its decision underscored the “problem” of bureaucracy.

Ng said officials might have focused on meeting the basic statutory requirements, but failed to “walk an extra mile” to address concerns of environmental advisers and members of the public considering the controversial nature of the project.

“Officials had time to address major concerns, which had been raised by members some time ago. But apparently, they were reluctant to compromise,” he said.

Citing government documents, he said the first technical study on developing the golf course was carried out in 2019 and the corresponding department took years to address concerns.

The advisory council has a statutory role in advising the Environmental Protection Department on whether to issue a permit to start construction. The department on Friday said it would study the report and decide whether to approve it after considering relevant materials, public comments and views of the council.