Ngau Tau Kok Drain Services

On.cc reported on 5 January 2016 that the operator of a restaurant on Ngau Tau Kok Road said sewage had repeatedly come up through a manhole inside the shop since 29 December 2015. A Drainage Services Department spokesperson said both the public sewer managed by DSD and the private sewer inside the shop were blocked, and that staff had cleared both on the evening of 4 January; the next day, during an Amber Rainstorm Warning, two restaurants there flooded again when water came up through a new manhole that was still under construction and not yet connected, and DSD said it was investigating the cause. For a restaurant, the in-shop outlets, grease trap and the private drain up to the public sewer have to be cleaned regularly by the operator, while the public sewer and street manholes are DSD's.

The Drainage Services Department's current list of Locations Prone to Blockage includes Ngau Tau Kok Road between Ngau Tau Kok MTR Station Exit B1 and Leun On Street among its Kwun Tong entries. Inferring from the nature of the list, the roadside gullies on this stretch are more easily clogged by litter, leaves or silt, so the road floods readily in a rainstorm. Standing water on the road does not mean the shop's own drain is blocked, but the floor drain at the entrance and the back-lane manhole may slow down at the same time. Clearing debris from the outlet in front of the shop before a storm and checking the shop's outlets for silt afterwards is more practical than unblocking later; report a blocked road gully to DSD.

Sky Post reported on 3 January 2023, citing TVB's Scoop programme, that a second-floor flat at Upper Ngau Tau Kok Estate had sewage backing up through its drains twice within a few weeks from 4 December 2022; the resident said the sewage contained masks, sanitary pads and a large wad of used tissue, and a neighbour on the same floor had experienced something similar. Inferring from the design, flats in the same vertical line of a high-rise public housing block share one soil stack, and once debris narrows the lower part of the stack, the lowest floors back up first. Public housing tenants should report backflow to the estate office immediately, and masks, wet wipes and sanitary products should never go into the toilet.

Wen Wei Po reported on 30 December 2020 that, according to one of the contractors on the job, the drain pipes at Lok Nga Court — then occupied for 36 years — had been installed inside the walls, so when residents complained of seepage it was impossible to tell by eye which floor was leaking and the pipe ducts had to be opened floor by floor; the paper reported that most flats below 6/F had seepage and damaged plaster on their bathroom ceilings. With its building inspection falling due, the whole court's drainage was improved: work began in May 2020 and was completed in mid-November, moving the whole drainage system to the external walls and changing from a single-stack to a two-pipe design, with the soil pipes connected to vent pipes to keep the air pressure in them stable. As a general inference from building age, in other 1980s blocks in the area whose pipes are still concealed in walls or ducts, seepage and odour may not appear where the fault is, so the pipe routes need to be traced before deciding whether the flat's branch pipe or the shared stack is to blame.