In the New Territories, many of the natural watercourses lie within private land. In the past, some flooding incidents were caused by the lack of maintenance of the main watercourses in these areas. The Government experienced great difficulty in obtaining the necessary consent from landowners to gain access and to carry out maintenance works to the watercourses.

Before works	After works

Works under the Land Drainage Ordinance

To overcome this problem, the Land Drainage Ordinance was enacted in 1994 empowering the Government to gain access into private land to carry out maintenance and to remove obstructions such as illegal structures encroaching upon those watercourses designated as main watercourses. Watercourse desilting and ancillary works under the Land Drainage Ordinance are on-going and there has been a definite improvement in the overall situation.

A Guide to Land Drainage Ordinance

LDO Form 1 (in PDF format, 89K)