I'm sure many people sympathise with the Lat Krabang residents and the officers at Chalong Krung police station who have endured a strong stench from a garbage dump in the neighbourhood for many years.
But I'm sure that not many of them really know how terrible it is living near a landfill and inhaling the odour 24/7.
Some 30 years ago, there was a huge garbage pile not far from my house. City Hall set up a facility to produce compost from the wet garbage at the dump site. I had to live with the stink from that rubbish mountain and the noise of garbage trucks running in and out of Soi Rong Pui, which means fertiliser plant soi in English.
Our neighbourhood was littered with rubbish that had fallen from those trucks. That rubbish is one of my childhood nightmares.
City Hall later closed down the dump site and in 2003 turned it into a public park.
The odour ordeal that Chalong Krung residents in Lat Krabang district are facing is similar to that which the Soi Rong Pui community in Bang Khen district suffered three decades ago.
The Chalong Krung landfill problem hit the headlines last week after the Royal Thai Police issued a temporary relocation order for the Chalong Krung police station, after pollution at the site started threatening the health of police officers.
The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration hired a transport company to dispose of garbage collected in Lat Krabang district. The company rented the land in the same district from a local businessman to dump the waste there.
After the lease expired, the landfill was no longer used and the garbage was left there.
The decision to relocate the police station might be good for the officers, but it has not solved the pollution problem, which continues to harm residents who have nowhere else to go.
This is not the first time the BMA's garbage disposal operations have caused problems for residents. Eleven years ago, residents of the Jamjuree Housing Estate in Samut Prakan's Bang Phli district lodged a complaint against several agencies about the foul smell coming from the nearby Racha Thewa landfill.
The landfill was run by Phairot Somphong Phanit Co, which won a contract from the BMA to move rubbish from On Nut to the Racha Thewa landfill.
The residents said they were badly affected by the stench. They fell sick and could not sleep at night when the odour was strongest. They asked the BMA to look into the problem and petitioned the Racha Thewa tambon administration organisation to close the landfill.
The locals' fight for their right to live in a clean environment finally ended in tragedy. On June 26, 2001, Suwat Wongpiyasathit, 46, who led protests against the landfill, was shot dead. Suwat's family and other Jamjuree residents believed the murder was linked to his role in the protest against the landfill.
The Appeal Court last year sentenced to death a member of the Racha Thewa tambon administration organisation for hiring gunmen to kill Suwat. The court also cited Suwat's protest against the landfill as a motivation for his murder.
The BMA can't deny responsibility in the Racha Thewa and Chalong Krung incidents because it was the party which hired private companies to dispose of the garbage.
The BMA should better control its contractors to make sure their landfills and garbage transport activities do not create trouble for residents.
It should also overhaul the city's garbage management system by implementing waste separation, and campaign for waste reduction among Bangkok residents to reduce the amount of rubbish that has to go to the landfills.
We have heard Bangkok Governor MR Sukhumbhand Paribatra boast about his ambitious plan to make Bangkok a greener and more liveable city.
He recently kicked off the "Bangkok, the paradise" campaign to make Bangkok a heavenly metropolis. But Bangkok can only become a slightly less stinky paradise city when its residents are not forced to endure the stench from abandoned or poorly managed landfills.
Kultida Samabuddhi is Deputy News Editor, Bangkok Post.