Demonstrators dumped construction waste outside Carrie Lam’s residence today to protest landfilling and wetland destruction, with Legco member Eddie Chu warning of further protests “if the government ignores us.”

The rally of about 30 people marched from Central ferry pier, bringing with them two trolleys filled with waste from South Lantau landfill sites.

They poured the trash onto the ground at the Government House gate to remind Lam that conserving South Lantau and protecting the wetlands are her own policies.

A police sergeant accepted a petition on behalf of Lam.

A police contingent almost as large as the protest itself watched over the event.

Eddie Chu told the demonstrators:

“We will come back if the government does not take the right actions to deal with this dumping issue.

“This is only the first action. There will be actions following if the government ignores us.

“We will not allow this to happen in South Lantau. We are not going to allow it to happen anywhere in rural Hong Kong.”

Paul Zimmerman, head of Designing Hong Kong and a candidate for the architectural constitutency at the forthcoming by-election, said the government needed to introduce new legislation to protect rural Hong Kong.

“If you want development in Hong Kong you have to give confidence to people that conservation truly is conservation,” he said.

He said landfilling of the kind carried out in rural Hong Kong was “destruction on purpose, to create development value,” to ensure land was already destroyed so it could be rezoned.

But the symbolic waste dumping may come at a cost to the protestors. Organiser Eddie Tse, head of the Save Lantau Allianced said police had warned him he could be fined for dumping the waste.