The major concern with the
beach refill project is the repeated damage to the beach that flood runoff
has caused. In areas such as near Soi 6 and Beach Road, water repeatedly has
cut large gouges out of the sand.
Jetsada Homklin
The long-delayed rebuilding of Pattaya Beach is expected to begin
early next year after the Marine Department approved a 430 million baht
budget for the 18-month project.
The city already has spent 13 million baht on planning, and 60 million baht
for the first phase of upgrading drainage.
Marine Department Region 6 Director Raewat Potriang said Marine Construction
Joint Venture Co. Ltd. was awarded the contract to refill the beach with
360,000 cu. meters of sand from a Rayong estuary. The contract is expected
to be signed before the end of the year with work to begin sometime between
January and May, depending on the length of the National Council for Peace
and Order’s anti-corruption review of the contract.
He said 80 percent of the work already has been mapped out and that the
entire project should take 18 months to complete.
Sand will be transported from Rayong via barge and kept 1.5 kilometers off
shore. Barriers will be built 15 meters off shore to hold sand and two
50-meter-long breakwaters will be built at the end of the beach in North and
South Pattaya to block sand from being swept away.
Refill sand also will be stored on land in a 6-8 rai area near the Dusit
Thani Hotel.
Marine Department Deputy Director-General Somchai Sumanushajonkul said the
Marine Department’s only concern with the project was the repeated damage to
the beach that flood runoff has caused. In areas such as near Soi 6 and
Beach Road, water repeatedly has cut large gouges out of the sand. The
installation of pumps along the beach failed to make any difference.
Earlier this month Pattaya officials announced plans to use 170 million baht
of beach-refill project funds to install four new, larger drainage pipelines
at four points on Beach Road. The pipelines would be laid in two phases,
with a 60 million baht first-phase and 110 million to complete the work.
Plans to rebuild Pattaya Beach began in 2011 when researchers from
Chulalongkorn University warned that the beach would disappear within five
years if nothing was done to counter erosion.
Yet despite the urgent warnings, funding for the project - originally
estimated at 600 million baht - was repeatedly delayed. Pattaya in 2012
performed stop-gap refill projects that managed to keep the beach’s life
expectancy at five years.
Thanawat Jarupongsakul of Chulalongkorn’s Geology Department, who has acted
as lead consultant on the project since 2011, said that in 1952, Pattaya
Beach covered 96,128 sq. meters and was, on average, 35.6 meters wide. By
2011, the beach had shrunk to as little as 3.5 meters.
He warned that the massive beach-refill project would not permanently solve
the problem. Erosion has carried away about 10,000 cu. meters of sand a
year. If that continues, more would be added in the next decade, he said.
