everybody now loves and uses and can’t imagine life without. They were protesting for nothing. In the end, change is necessary.” The great unknown For many, it is the lack of clarity moving forward that is most worrisome, with the initial cap of 25,000 residents seemingly set to be ignored by developers. Sixteenyear DB resident Colin Bosher, COC member and chairman of La Vista Village Owners Committee (VOC), feels that homeowners in DB are getting a “raw deal” because they bought into a “low-density, pleasant development”. “The government is not transparent, the developer is not transparent,” Colin says. “It appears that there is no limit on the amount of development. You look at the OZP (Outline Zoning Plan) and it says 25,000 people, but it turns out that figure is actually meaningless because 25,000 is just how much water the Water Supplies Department said it could provide. So then the developer turns around and simply opts to build a new water treatment plant and a new sewage treatment plant.” Colin believes the planned N1 North development near Chianti will be enough to tip the DB population – which currently stands at around 18,000 – over 25,000, even before the housing developments at Nim Shue Wan and behind Parkvale Village are taken into account.
Baljit Gidwani, Dr Francis Chiu, Colin Bosher, Paula Lepore Burrough and Amy Yung
comparing today to seven years ago, we can see a lot of visitors coming to DB, which is making the tropical paradise less of a paradise.” Photographer Baljit Gidwani moved to DB in 1985 and he is equally nostalgic about the good old days. But he is realistic about the progress he has seen and is confident DB would not be the place it is today
without the work done by Hong Kong Resorts (HKR). “It’s all the progress and all the infrastructure that HKR has done that makes DB liveable, that makes it the place it is,” Baljit says. “People moaned like mad when the tunnel was built and there was uproar when they said they were going to let taxis in. But every step HKR has taken,
Amy Yung, DB’s representative on the Islands District Council, is also concerned about DB’s population count, as well as the endeavours of HKR to attract tourists. “We want tranquillity, a quality of life, that is why we move to Discovery Bay,” she says. “But during the holidays and weekends, I can see there are special activities that attract a lot of people from outside, and some of the residents complain they have to
www.arounddb.com January 2017
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