People in the western provinces of Thailand urged the authorities to halt a project to build a motorway, connecting a province adjacent to Bangkok to the western coast, out of environmental concerns on Mae Klong River Basin.
According to Green News TV, on 14 August 2015, representatives of people of Nakhon Pathom, Ratchaburi, Phetchaburi, and Samut Songkhram, the four western provinces of Thailand submitted a letter and documents to Adm Wanlop Kerdphol, the head of the Sub-committee of Natural Resource and Environment of the National Legislative Assembly (NLA), over the proposal to build the motorway, connecting Nakhon Pathom with Cha-Am District of Phetchaburi, a famous resort town in western Thailand.
The representatives of the four western provinces requested the state authorities to halt the infrastructure project, pointing out that it would be detrimental to the environment and livelihoods of people many of whom are farmers along Mae Klong River Basin, a river originated from the western Tenasserim Hills which flows through several western provinces before emptying out into the Gulf of Thailand in Samut Songkhram Province.
The current blueprint of the Nakhon Pathom-Cha-Am motorway project (Photo from Green News TV)
In addition, they also called on the authorities to investigate into public and private agencies involved in conducting the Environmental Assessment Impact (EIA) on the project, saying that the locals who would be affected the most by the project did not participate in the EIA and that it failed to foresee the environmental impacts on the river basin and farmlands, which is one of the most productive in the country.
The EIA on the 119 km motorway, which is estimated to cost about 80.6 billion baht (about 2.3 billion USD), was approved in 2009. Currently, the project is in the process to settle the reclamation plan and issue Royal Decree to reclaim land plots for the construction.
For the locals, the motorway project that would cut through many of the region’s canal networks and farmlands means that the local farmers would lose their rights to manage the water resource in the area in additional to some of their farmlands, which would be reclaimed.
Sumol Sutawiriyawat, a local resident of Phetchaburi Province said that the motorway project would not only affect her farmlands, but it would also change the traditional lifeways in which people along the Mae Klong River Basin cohabitate with the environment.
Typical orchards abundant in western provinces of Thailand, which rely on water resources of networks of canals of Mae Klong River Basin (Photo from Green News TV)
He suggested that the authorities should rethink about the feasibility of such project in the region and come up with different models of the motorway construction to minimise the impacts that it might have on environment.
Surajit added that there are also alternatives to the project, such as an upgrade or an enlargement to the existing roads in the area, which is much cheaper than the current motorway plan and has much less environmental impacts.
The leader of People Who Love Mae Klong Association pointed out that he and the representatives of the locals voiced concerns about the environmental impacts that the project might cause before in 2009, but it did not stop the controversial EIA on the project from being approved by the state authorities.