Liquid cleaner: Chief Executive Donald Tsang sees how water is filtered on a tour of the Tai Po water treatment works.

Chief Executive Donald Tsang has hailed the Water Supplies Department's effort in maintaining the quality of its treated water supply to comply fully with the World Health Organisation's guidelines for drinking-water quality.

Mr Tsang today visited the department to better understand its work in receiving and distributing the raw water supply from Dongjiang and controlling the quality of water supplied to the public.

Director of Water Supplies Chan Chi-chiu accompanied  Mr Tsang on a tour of the Tai Po water treatment works. It started operation in late 2003 to produce treated water for Tai Po and Kowloon areas and has a daily production capacity of 250,000 cubic metres.

Award winner

The treatment works was awarded the global grand prize and regional prize in the design category of the International Water Association Project Innovation Awards last year. The facility was designed to take advantage of the most advanced technologies in producing high quality drinking water.

Mr Tsang also learned the Dongjiang water supply's quality has improved since the dedicated Dongjiang-Shenzhen aqueduct system was commissioned in mid-2003.

Correct reading

On recent reports of alleged overcharging of water bills, Mr Tsang said the department has put in place a mechanism to ensure correctness of meter readings and billing.

These include the systematic replacement of older meters and the provision of built-in "out-range alerts" in the personal digital assistants meter readers use. They will be alerted to check and re-input the reading when a new reading appears to be inconsistent with previous consumptions.

Before ending his visit, Mr Tsang met frontline staff to learn more about their challenges at work.