It was deja vu all over again in the southern tourist haven of Krabi on Monday.
The scene was a public hearing for a coal-fired power plant project proposed by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat).
There, soldiers with war weapons joined police in riot gear and local volunteers to guard the venue, purportedly against threats posed by project opponents.
You would think the opponents were members of a gang of marauders ready to storm the venue and take everyone hostage, which would have justified such a show of force.
Instead, what you had was a group of villagers in green T-shirts and a few banners opposing the project. A similar scene was witnessed last month when a hearing was held on a proposed deep-sea port to transport coal for the proposed power plant.
The show of force helped turn the venue into a riot-control zone instead of a forum where citizens gathered to voice their opinions on the project.
Such a scene, unfortunately, is becoming common of late.
The hearing is supposed to be a forum where a research team presents its findings on the environmental and health impact assessments of the project as well as propose mitigation measures and developmental options.
It is also where citizens could voice their opinions and concerns. At the end, the exercise is supposed to arrive at some sort of understanding.
But ever since project developers have been legally required to produce EIAs to justify their proposals over two decades ago, EIA hearings have become more like battlegrounds.
The EIA law was a flawed piece of legislation from the start. Instead of being a mechanism for finding possible solutions, the EIA process is fraught with elements of conflict.
The credibility of an EIA study is always an issue. As it is, project developers are required to commission the study. They choose who to do it and pay for it.
Not surprisingly, opponents look askance at these studies. They believe the EIA study team hired for the purpose is bound to produce results favourable to the people who pay them.
Another major sore point for opponents is the EIA process is regarded by developers as just an annoying barrier to cross, not a tool to assess the merits of a project.
An EIA study can be revised time and again until it passes scrutiny by an expert panel under the Office of Natural Resources and Environment Policy and Planning (Onep). There is no provision where a project may be terminated if it is found to be seriously flawed.
In a famous case involving a project to build a coal-fired power plant in Prachuap Khiri Khan many years ago, the EIA study was found to have missed completely the presence of a crop of coral reefs well known to residents.
The project was later scrapped but for reasons not related to the flaws in the EIA.
In the meantime, all that environmentalists and academics can do is to help affected villagers understand the complicated EIA process and be able to reach informed opinions.
One particular academic, a former activist, has come up with an innovative tool to help villagers learn about their local resources.
For more than a decade, Chainarong Sretchua, a lecturer of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Mahasarakham University, has encouraged villagers to learn about their environment through what he calls community-based research.
Villagers form a major part of the research team to establish a knowledge base of local natural resources that help sustain the ecosystem as well as local people's livelihoods.
Traditional EIAs cover this type of data often inadequately and as a matter of formality, but fail to elaborate on the intimate relationship between natural resources and local way of life and the environment.
Mr Chainarong has done a similar study in Krabi covering the deep-sea port project area. With the help of 107 villagers, the team was able to produce research that shows the Krabi seas are teeming with amazing numbers of aquatic species, more so than were listed in an Onep study in 2006.
Numerous calls have been made to change the way the EIA study process is carried out to ensure that such a study is reliable and credible.
These include suggestions that developers are required to fund a parallel EIA study by independent researchers, or an independent organisation be established to commission independent EIA studies. Such and other changes are imperative to prevent the EIA process from spiralling into even more of a farce than it already is.
Wasant Techawongtham is former News Editor, Bangkok Post.