Bangkok dammed by garbage

Officials have blamed waterborne garbage for the floods that swamped areas of Bangkok following a freak summer storm on Tuesday.
Bangkok Governor MR Sukhumbhand Paribatra admitted that the release of floodwater had been too slow, but he put the blame on a mass of garbage clogging drainage pipes at
wastewater-pumping stations. Other Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) officials, as well as some experts in flooding, joined him in pointing the finger at a garbage build-up in the city’s wastewater system and canals that is slowing the flow and making it difficult to pump the water off the streets.
It took several hours to drain floodwater from streets in many areas of the city following Tuesday’s downpour. Everyday life was disrupted and local businesses now face large clean-up bills.
The city authorities might have been caught off-guard, not expecting so much rain to fall so quickly at this time of year. Normally, drainage pipes and canals are dredged a few weeks before the rainy season, which starts around May or June. Kangwan Deesuwan, director of the BMA’s Drainage and Sewerage Department, said that he has instructed his officials at all district offices in the capital to focus on collecting garbage from the streets to prevent it from blocking the flow of rainwater. He also pledged to install more water pumps in flood-prone areas of the city by the end of next month.
Bangkok relies heavily on natural waterways like canals to drain floodwater from the city. Large drainage tunnels cover only a small area of the vast capital. This drainage shortfall often comes back to haunt Bangkok in the rainy season, when deluges can swamp whole districts in a matter of hours.
Many people treat the capital’s canals as garbage bins, using them to discard everything from household waste to large items like old mattresses. That garbage load is swelled by the natural debris of leaves and branches swept into the drainage system during heavy downpours. The result is obstacles and blockages that exacerbate the flooding. That drainage pipes in many areas of the city are narrow makes the problem even worse. Structures built illegally on canal banks, such as shanty housing, make the situation worse by constricting waterways. As a result, after heavy rain we get heavier and longer floods on Bangkok streets.
These problems must be addressed if we want to prevent the kind of scenes witnessed on Tuesday. Bangkok residents could make a start by avoiding throwing garbage into waterways. City authorities could get tough with those who use these drainage channels as their own personal rubbish bins. They should also deal with the problem of canal-side squatting. And dredging drainage pipes and canals more often would ease the flow of floodwater. Old, narrow pipes could be replaced with larger ones to increase drainage capacity.
With the rainy season only weeks away, we need to take action now if we don’t want the city to be paralysed by flood after flood in the months to come.