PATTAYA – As Pattaya’s consultant continues to contemplate Koh Larn’s garbage crisis, Chonburi’s governor ordered the city and its contractor to do something, and quickly.
Gov. Pakarathorn Thienchai visited the resort island March 14, seeing for himself the 40,000 tons of rubbish that has accumulated due to Pattaya’s inability to haul away the waste.
The Pattaya City Council in December approved spending of 95 million baht for new barges to bring Koh Larn’s garbage surplus to a mainland landfill and hire a consultant from King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok to devise a long-term solution to the solid-waste management problem.
The new vessels have made only a small dent in the garbage backlog. Officials in December estimated there were 50,000 tons of garbage piled up in the 12-rai Samae Beach dumpsite. That’s dropped only 20 percent in four months.
Local authorities told the governor the island generates 20 tons of trash a day, although earlier estimates pegged that at 50 tons.
Pakarathorn said he realized solving the problem can’t be done overnight, but instructed Pattaya officials to do less thinking and more acting to get things rolling.
