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1
FEB. 2000 - SAMUI ISLAND IN DANGER OF BECOMING A WASTE TRADE TARGET
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SAMUI, THAILAND. The tourist island Koh Samui on the East coast of Thailand is in danger of becoming a destination for waste disposal from other provinces, since the present expensive oversized local incinerator is running under capacity. |
| Greenpeace today warned the island’s population that Samui is going to be under enormous pressure to receive waste imports from elsewhere in Thailand and possibly even from overseas in order run its existing Japanese funded incinerator at full capacity. While visiting Koh Samui with its flagship Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace strongly condemned development aid arms of the Japanese Government for pushing inappropriate and polluting technologies to deal with Thailand’s garbage problem. |  |
Samui island generates only 72 tons of garbage per day whereas the island’s incinerator is designed to burn around double this amount, 140 tons a day. At present only one furnace of the Samui incinerator is used only every 10 days.
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“Incinerator
companies operate on the premise that the more they burn the more
they earn. Already the construction and maintenance costs from the
Samui incinerator to the Thai government and the taxpayers are tremendous.
The present incinerator is far from being a solution to the problem
of waste in Samui but instead it has given birth to a need to either
produce more waste or to import garbage” said Tara Buakamsri, Greenpeace’s
Toxic Campaigner in Thailand.
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Samui’s
solid waste incinerator is a Japanese designed and funded facility. Built
in 1997 for 501 million baht ($13.5 million USD) through a joint Thai-Japanese
venture involving Palcon Co. and NKK. The incinerator construction was funded
by a grant to the Public Works Department by the Japanese Overseas Economic
Cooperation Fund (OECF).
The 50M baht ($1.3 million USD) yearly bill that the government pays the for the operation of the incinerator essentially means that the taxpayers are currently paying Palcon-Montaney a whopping 140,449 baht per day ($3795 USD)
“It is ironic that rich countries such as Japan export dirty technologies such as incinerators while at home there is increasing pressure to reduce incineration. Also one has to ask why the incinerator has been so grossly overbuilt, unless a waste trade option is in mind”, added Buakamsri.
Greenpeace’s scientific sampling result from Samui demonstrate that the ash dumped near the facility contains high levels of the toxic heavy metals. Lead levels in the ash were around 120 times higher than background and cadmium levels around 80 times higher than background. The plant operators infomed us that the facilaity release 4 ng/m3 ITEQ of dioxin. This is around 40 times higher than the acceptable level applied in Europe and Japan.
“We call the Thai government to reject foreign funding for new incinerators and place a moratorium on all new incineration projects. Instead we need to invest in waste prevention, source separation, composting and recycling. The incineration is simply an expensive technology which transforms potentially recyclable materials into hazardous waste”, said Buakamsri.
Here is a personal account of the visit to the Incinerator:
"Samui - this island in the Gulf of Thailand is a wonderland where time loses
it's dimension - a spectacular composition of natures fantasy." This text,
which can be found in the tourist magazine Samui Welcome, describes the spirit
of Koh Samui on the spot. But in the middle of this wonderland, squeezed in
between palm trees and tropical Forests, sits Samui's solid waste incineration
plant. With its chimneystack, cheerfully painted in red and white, the incinerator
makes a harsh contrast to its scenic surroundings.
We arrived to the site in the morning. The guards at the gate seemed a bit
bothered by the sight of a small busload of Greenpeace activists and journalists
closing in to the plant. However, this time there would be no chimney climbing
or confrontation of any kind. Our primary goal was simply to hold a press
conference outside the fence to point out the environmental hazards connected
with incineration. Inside the fence, everything was quiet and obviously the
plant wasn't running this day. In fact, it would have been a big surprise
if it had been running, considering the lack of garbage which makes it possible
to run the facility only every 10 days. This could be seen as something positive,
but the dark truth is that this puts pressure on Koh Samui to either produce
more garbage or to import, instead of reducing the amount of garbage by recycling.
To make the two-year-old incinerator cost efficient, the Paradise Island has
to be turned into a waste treatment facility for other parts of Thailand or
even overseas.
When the press conference was finished, we were invited inside the incinerator.
At first, everything appeared very clean and modern, but once we got to the
ashdump, the illusion of the harmless plant was crushed. Except from toxic
smoke, the incineration process also produces large quantities of ash. Collected
from the gas pipe and the bottom of the furnace, it's dumped just outside
the plant. Analysis done by Greenpeace shows alarming levels of led and cadmium
in the ash. Actually it's quite simple. All toxic components that are put
into a furnace will also come out, but now in the shape of toxic gas or toxic
ash. Sooner or later, the poisonous metals will be assimilated into the nature
with devastating results. Despite what many people think, incinerators don't
solve the waste problem. They only make the problem look smaller than it actually
is. Behind the existing ash dump, we could see earthmovers preparing a large
area for dumping future toxic ash waste. If or when the ash dumps gets flooded,
a small creek just next to the plant is in the acute danger zone.
As we left the incinerator we had an extra look at the beautiful surroundings.
Next time we get here, this wonderland Island may not be a paradise anymore.
Feb
3 - Poisons in Paradise Webcast
