new Suvarnabhumi airport community latest in act-first, think-later Thai megaprojects

from the Nation:

Proposal for metropolis around new airport will take us back to square one

Re: "New metropolis is a dubious proposal", Editorial, June 22.

Your concise analysis is right on the nail. I for one have been wondering over the years why government initiatives, more often than not, do not or need not go through vigorous environmental impact assessment (EIA), social impact assessment (SIA), health impact assessment (HIA), traffic impact assessment (TIA) and so on. The EIA, above all, is required by law for all projects of any significant magnitude, such as a sizeable hotel, a hospital, a gas pipeline, gas plant, a road through natural reserves, power lines, etc. However, this metropolis seems likely to be exempted from any formal scrutiny and public input before it is regarded as feasible and acceptable to be implemented.

Hype about building a city complex in rural or suburban areas close to Bangkok Metropolis has been created numerous times without actual implementation, be it the Chachoengsao government administration metropolis, the Ban Na Nakhon Nayok administrative capital and the like. All were proposed without any proper prior study, like pie in the sky that will be shot down sooner rather than later to make way for yet another bright idea. Possibly the only benefit from these was to speculators and insiders to the process.

Innovative as it is, this latest move to establish a city on some 500 square kilometres of land surrounding the new international airport needs a big shot of common sense and engineering sense even before the notion can be publicised. The Don Muang Airport, as it is generally known, is being abandoned primarily because it is thought to be unable to cope with the demands of ever-growing air traffic. It has been stated that the area is now surrounded by so much development that expansion is virtually impossible, hence the need for another, unconfined area and the eventual selection of a new site at Nong Ngu Hao on some 32 square kilometres of lowland.

The move from a "don" (high ground) to a "nong" (swamp) is justified by the above constraints. However, even before it goes into operation this September, the idea for surrounding the new airport with settlements blatantly explodes in our faces. This will force our poor descendants back to square one: a problem like the one we face with Don Muang airport. Then there are the problems with all civil engineering on soft ground (remember reports of differential subsidence and cracks in the new airport's tarmac not so long ago?), traffic volume affecting the airport's accessibility, and proper sewage in a lowland that itself serves as an important drainage area for Bangkok.

As for the noise problem and ecological disturbances along its air corridors, nothing seems to have been thoroughly thought through - if at all - by those proposing the new metropolis. In other countries airports have been built offshore simply because the noise of landing and take-off at odd hours was not acceptable to local residents, ruling out the 24-hour operations required by the growing aviation industry. One example is the Kansai International Airport in Japan.

I have always taught my students that engineers are basically creators - and sometimes disaster-makers if things go really wrong. It seems to me now that we are the lesser evil compared to politicians. They are so blind to constructive criticism that they are willing to commit - even in a caretaker capacity - to something unsustainable by our children without prior study so as to avoid or mitigate probable problems before any real calamity takes place.

Go ahead with your bright idea, my elected politicians, as you think you are legitimately empowered by the majority of the people in this country to do it. But to serve them well you should at least have your hype independently and academically scrutinised together with some sort of public participation before laying out your plans. Let's hope this is not another pie in the sky scheme concocted to serve certain friends of yours, or yourselves.