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Understanding Thais from how they handle floods in Bangkok

After a long period of hot and humid but rainless weather, the sky finally opened up in Bangkok. The rain came in torrents that quickly overwhelmed the city’s drainage capacity.

A motorcycle taxi-rider resting during a downpour in Bangkok, Thailand, on May 30, 2017. Photo: AP

A motorcycle taxi-rider resting during a downpour in Bangkok, Thailand, on May 30, 2017. Photo: AP

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After a long period of hot and humid but rainless weather, the sky finally opened up in Bangkok. The rain came in torrents that quickly overwhelmed the city’s drainage capacity.

As usual there were traffic snarls all over the city. Time was lost and tempers flared. Social media was flooded with people sharing stories of their travails.

Once again a common phenomenon on the streets of Bangkok flashes light on the malaise of what is known as “The Thai Way”.

One thing leads to another, and all of a sudden a whole slew of symptoms converge into a stream of serious ailments.

First, there was flooding, a common enough occurrence in the capital after heavy rain. That called for city officials led by non-elected Governor Police General Aswin Kwanmuang to reassure residents that officials were hard at work putting things back to normal.

His reassurance made no difference, of course. Motorists still got stuck in traffic, and people still had to wade in foul water to run their chores.

It also didn’t help when public attention was drawn to another annoying problem that appeared each time the flood came. Large quantities of trash in the waterways, to everyone’s chagrin, were found that frustrated city workers’ attempts to drain floodwaters.

Large pieces such as mattresses and various furniture items, but also assortments of other trash, all helped to clog the drainage.

That led to people grumbling about district officials’ tendency to ignore the annual dredging of sewers and klongs (canals) until heavy rain forces them to pay attention, by which time it is too late.

This led to some people asking, again, why sewage and rainwater didn’t have separate conduits. As it is, both sewage and rainwater run into the same pipes that drain into larger sewage drains that used to be beautiful canals.

The issue became a topic of discussion more than 20 years ago before the first wastewater treatment plant was built at Si Phraya. At the time, building two separate drainage systems was considered not practical because of a lack of money.

So both sewage and rainwater go into the same drainage system even though it makes for an inefficient system.

But when the city eventually had enough resources to tackle the problem, officials’ attentions were diverted elsewhere as Bangkok had been allowed to grow into a gargantuan sprawl. Any attempt to put it in order thus becomes futile.

Currently, the city runs seven wastewater treatment plants, taking care of about half of the more than one million cubic metres of sewage generated each year.

Five new treatment plants are in the works and expected to come online possibly in a few years’ time. Even with all of 12 plants operational, the volume of wastewater will be too massive to be handled. More new plants will be needed.

New treatment plants will help alleviate the problem of annual floods somewhat because new drains will have to be built.

But floods will always be with us and pose serious challenges for city administrators. The way things go, however, the task is not only daunting but well-nigh impossible.

That’s because we tend to shy away from tackling problems at the root cause. We try to solve structural problems but do little to fix cultural issues having to do with people’s environmental behaviour and social responsibility.

Thais’ tendency to leave rubbish behind and to occupy public space where and when it suits them comes to mind. If they are troubled by environmental or developmental harm caused by their actions, they will find some rationale to explain it away.

We also tend to deal with problems as they occur even though it is possible to foresee the problems before they occur. Crisis management is the name of the game. We prefer to leave problems to fester until the sores erupt.

And the biggest sore is our mode of development which is haphazard at best. As many experts have noted before, the urban landscape has been allowed to grow with little regard for the waterscape.

Bangkok sits on low-lying plains with over 1,000 canals originally, which if left alone would have helped drain floodwaters quickly. Unfortunately, their number has over past decades been decimated to a few hundred now.

Much of the city’s area used to be paddy fields and wetlands. Housing estates as well as other development projects have been allowed to be built on these lands, depriving the city of areas to absorb floodwater.

Even after the impact of uninhibited development became known, there were no efforts at all to contain it. Even now the remaining wetlands are being turned into concrete without pause.

Meanwhile, land subsidence continues to put Bangkok even lower vis-à-vis the sea level just as global warming is increasing sea levels.

With all its flaws and illogical development, Bangkok has been adopted as a model of development for other urban areas in the country. That really gives me a queasy feeling. BANGKOK POST

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Wasant Techawongtham is former News Editor, Bangkok Post.

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