The gates of the water treatment plant in Khlong Dan, Samut Prakan province, are closed. In fact, they have never opened since the 23.7 billion baht project was built in 1998.
Dawan Chantarahesdee, community leader of Khlong Dan, is known for her key role in exposing corruption and environmental impact of the Khlong Dan waste water treatment plant project.
For more than a decade, the Khlong Dan plant smelled much worse than any foul water. This waste water treatment project is one of the biggest, most controversial and most embarrassing corruption scandals in Thai history.
One of the factors that put a stop to the project was the tough and unyielding effort of the Khlong Dan community and housewife-turned-activist Dawan Chantarahesdee. Now 57, Dawan led a decade-long protest and exposed the dirty business of Khlong Dan — from the illegal land purchase to corruption in implementation and construction — until the project was cancelled when it was 95% completed.
About 20 people including the late former science, technology and environment minister Yingphan Manasikarn (who passed away in 2002) and former Interior deputy minister Vatana Asavahame, a veteran Samut Prakan politician and local "godfather", were charged with corruption. One of six court cases was concluded in 2008 when the Supreme Court's Criminal Division for Holders of Political Positions sentenced Vatana to 10 years in jail for abuse of power and criminal coercion in connection with the scandal. Vatana has been on the run ever since.
Khlong Dan is a centuries-old community dating back to the Ayutthaya period. It is situated in Bang Bo district, about 50km southeast of Bangkok and at the edge of Samut Prakan, next to Chachoengsao province. It is a green zone where mangrove forests blanket the coastline.
"We are a fishing community," said Dawan. "We have the largest green mussel farming area in Thailand. Why would someone want to construct the largest waste water treatment plant in Southeast Asia in our homeland?"
Dawan's family has lived in the community for more than two generations. When she was young she helped her mother sell fruit and flowers in Khlong Dan wet market and continued to do so after she graduated with a political science degree from Ramkhamhaeng University. After getting married, she owned a food stall in the market.
Like most female activists we've featured, Dawan's life was simple and peaceful, but circumstances forced her to take a stand. In 1998, a large billboard went up on old Highway 3 (Sukhumvit Sai Kao) just a few kilometres away from her home and the wet market. The billboard stated that the land was designated for a new waste water treatment plant.
The project took the community of about 60,000 people by surprise. The Pollution Control Department (PCD), the project owner, failed to inform the locals about the project and did not conduct an environmental impact assessment.
The multi-billion-baht project began on Oct 17, 1995, when it was approved by the government of Banharn Silpa-archa. The aim was to improve environmental quality by treating 500,000m³ of waste water daily from more than 4,000 factories and 1.2 million households in Samut Prakan province, which housed a number of industrial facilities. The original plan was to have two treatment plants at the east and the west sites of the Chao Phraya River at Bang Pla Kot and Bang Pu Mai. The project was consolidated in 1997 to become one plant and relocated to 1,900 rai of land in Khlong Dan, 20km away from its original planned site. Khlong Dan is not in an industrial zone, but a mudflat area with mangrove forests. The budget was increased — nearly doubled — from 13.6 billion baht to 23.7 billion baht.
Before the PCD sent a team to explain the project to the community after getting a lot of pressure from locals, Dawan made a move. She did her own research about waste water management and its environmental impact. She also called an expert, Prof Thongchai Pansawat of Chulalongkorn University's Environmental Engineering Department, for more information.
"Nothing was too technical or too hard to understand because I really wanted to know the whole process of the waste water treatment," she said. Bit by bit, she learned that it was not possible for the Khlong Dan project to remove heavy metals from its sludge, so the treated water discharged from the plant would be contaminated. The project would also have a high cost of operation because it would need water pumping stations to push waste water through the 125km long sewage pipe to the central treatment station. It would also need several methane-release stations along the way.
She raised three main questions in a technical hearing with the PCD in late 1998. One was about the practice of discharging treated but contaminated waste water into the sea. The treated water could have diluted the salinity level crucial for green mussel farming along the shore.
"If the salinity was diluted, it might mean not only that the mussels might not have survived, but also that they could not form. The heavy metals would also contaminate our sea. If we could not farm mussels and harvest our seafood, the project would absolutely destroy our livelihood," she said.
She also questioned the PCD about the management of 50 tonnes of sludge a day, and the stench, which the PCD did not prepare for. "It was clear that this project would have a bad impact on our lives," she said.
From 1998, Khlong Dan villagers submitted their petitions and protested in front of Samut Prakan's mayor's office. In March 1999, about 1,500 people protested in front of Government House in Bangkok demanding that then prime minister Chuan Leekpai stop the project. They also filed a letter signed by 1,000 people to the National Counter-Corruption Committee and many petitions to several other related authorities including the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of National Resources and Environment, the Department of Fisheries and a committee of senators. But the mega project lived on.
"Two years after our series of protests, we learned that the project was financially supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB)," she said. The bank offered a US$230 million (about 10.3 billion baht at the time) loan and Japan's Overseas Economic Co-operation Fund, which already changed its name to Japan International Co-operation Agency, provided an additional US$50 million (2.2 billion baht) loan.
"The ADB did not yet have an office in Thailand [in 2000]. We thought about flying to Manila on our own money to meet with ADB," she said, adding that luckily the bank was about to organise its annual board meeting in Chiang Mai.
Dawan and her team managed to join the parallel conference and anti-ADB demonstrations, which made the Khlong Dan case widely known to the public. The Campaign for Alternative Industry Network (now Earth: Ecological Alert and Recovery — Thailand) helped the villagers organise meetings and convinced them to write a letter to ADB's inspection panel. In the letter, the villagers questioned the bank about its governance, anti-corruption policies and the project's goal of sustainable development. Dawan said the Khlong Dan scandal became the first case that ADB investigated with its inspection panel and also the first request that the ADB accept complaint letters in languages other than just English.
Dawan also raised the Khlong Dan case in several international forums in Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka to alert the problems to the Japanese government and related parties. She also joined ADB's annual meeting in Hawaii on July 10, 2001, with the support of NGO Forum On ADB. She was one of three representatives from the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand to talk with the bank's president Tadao Chino (in office from 1999-2005). She asked to be the last among the three to be introduced to Chino. Once the two shook hands, she did not let go even while the other two representatives reported their problems to Chino. He tapped her palm signalling her to let go of his hand, but she didn't.
When it was her time to speak, she tightened her grip and looked into Chino's eyes. She wanted to pass on the feeling of the Khlong Dan people to the president and said slowly and firmly: "Stop the project — Samut Prakan Waste Water Management."
The next year, the two met again at ADB's annual meeting in Shanghai. Dawan greeted him with smile and asked, "Do you remember me?", when they shook hands. No one could forget the 15-minute handshake and Chino replied: "Yes. Yes. Khlong Dan."
In 2001, ADB's inspection panel reported that the bank indeed did not comply with some of its own policies such as operational missions, and environment and good governance procedures because of illegal land purchases and operational corruption. ADB withdrew from the project in 2003. During that year, the project reached its final phase, but still it was delayed another year due to locals obstructing the construction.
The final phase was to connect the underground sewage pipes to the plant. One section of the pipes would pass through the market. In late 2001, the villagers erected a bamboo fence around the section in the market to prevent the contractor from completing the project.
"We realised that the pipes were like a gullet. Without it, waste water could flow to the plant and be discharged into the sea," she said. About 50 women aged between 50-70 took turns to guard the section as suggested by Dawan. She wanted to avoid any possible clash, such as the one that happened in December 2000 when construction site workers threw iron bars and stones at a large group of villagers who blocked road access to the site.
Later, the PCD asked to talk with the villagers. Dawan and seven others, including a 25-year-old pregnant woman and elders, met PCD officials in Bangkok. "We had the pregnant woman with us to tell them that even the one who hadn't been born yet was against the project," she said.
During the years of protest, Dawan was caught in the politicking that arose as the conflict grew. Several times, representatives of the contractor and policemen came to see her. After a while, some locals misunderstood and thought she had changed sides.
"It hurt when I realised that there were rumours spreading around that I had changed. But their tricks didn't work. People knew me. And it's not only me who didn't want the project, but the whole community," she said.
Dawan also recalled that one day she answered her mobile phone and a heard ticking sound like a bomb from the other end. But nothing could scare her. "Before I decided to pick up this fight in 1998, I asked my husband for his opinion. He told me to go ahead because this is our homeland. Once my mother asked me to stop as she was concerned for my safety. I told her I had to fight to the end," she said.
In 2003, she carried out investigative research with support from the People's Fund For Exposing Corruption. She discovered details of connections of local authorities to powerful politicians and corruption at both local and national levels. She revealed the truth to the public. Dawan got the big fish, finally.
In February 2003, the project was halted after the three government studies found evidence of rampant corruption. Khlong Dan started as an environmental case, but had become a corruption scandal involving illegal and speculative land deals. The Land Department decided to revoke the deeds of four plots of land used for the construction site totalling 1,358 rai as they used to be public land with mangrove forests and public canals. In May this year, the PCD ordered Vatana Asavahame to pay 5.22 billion baht and Yingpan's heirs about 4.77 billion baht in compensation over losses caused by the Khlong Dan waste water treatment project.
"I still keep my eyes open and follow every step of the court cases," she said. There at least five court cases ongoing, and Dawan now works for Earth: Ecological Alert and Recovery — Thailand as a researcher. She is still interested in current issues related to environmental impact, such as hazardous waste, the government's recycling policy and garbage dump sites.
She has learned from her experience that when going up against powerful politicians or government policies, having the right information is the mighty sword. "I want to use my skills in helping others," she said.
Today the waste water treatment facilities are deserted, a remnant of shame but also of victory. The site is still guarded by security officers.
"Mangrove forests, which were cleared by the construction, are coming back. Nature has returned to the place," said Dawan. "What we have done during the past two decades is to keep our home in the green zone for farming as it has been for centuries. I hope one day our community might be a tourist stop where people can learn more about mangrove forests and their ecosystem."
Residents from Khlong Dan rallied in front of City Hall in Samut Prakan in March 2001 to oppose plans to rezone the area as industrial.
A panoramic view of the plant when it was 20% complete.
Dawan Chantarahesdee, pointing, took Visanu Krue-ngam, head of a national committee on the project, on a tour of the facility in Samut Prakan on 11 July, 2002.
