Above Bawd in Pattaya
By John Thomas
The urban myth that Pattaya beach is dirty
I was as overjoyed as the next beach-avoider when I saw the title of this topic on
the Teakdoor website recently.
But just as I was pulling on my swimming trunks and bathing cap to dive into the
sea near the water/sewage outflow pipe at the top of Walking Street (near the
well-located sewage treatment centre), I paused for a moment and read some of
the posts.
It all started with a non-Pattaya resident poster called Socal, who boldly advanced
the argument that Pattaya’s beaches are actually clean, using some internet-
garnered scientific cut and paste resources and ending with the comment:
The beach is not dirty, it is safe to swim in, and every rumor you hear out there is
bullshit.
Of course, to many who actually live in Pattaya, it wasn’t bull effluent that
concerned them, but that of a human kind, and the poster received a well-
deserved blast from some thoughtful, intelligent and well-informed posters on
the subject of the treatment of waste in our fair city. And some plain abusive ones
too.
Mind you the poster didn’t help himself or his argument when he mistakenly
posted a nice photograph of JOMTIEN beach and its cleaner sea, instead of
Pattaya Beach, as a way of advancing his argument about the cleanliness of the
seawater in Pattaya bay.
He was pulled up on this by Dirtydog: Jomtien is ok, I have seen cleaner places in
the world, but trying to prove that Pattaya beach is clean by posting a photo of
Jomtien beach is slightly misleading to say the least.
Some really disturbing facts came out of this topic. For example, Dirtydog
made the point that although Pattaya’s rainwater drainage should just contain
rainwater, in fact it is a very common practice in the city for old shophouses,
especially those in sois close to the beach, to connect their waste pipes and cess
pits containing raw sewage into it.
Loy Toy also said this is common in residential properties throughout the city.
As this stormwater exits into the sea, in both Pattaya and Jomtien, it inevitably
carries more than rainwater with it.
Also hold that thought for when the city’s streets are flooded in storms and you
have to walk through the resulting lakes and rivers of water.
Halfmile said: No sea-birds at the beach, nor any crabs running in the sand at
sunset. Pattaya Beach seems to be a maritime deathzone.
Perhaps the reasons for that were highlighted by posters such as Lostandfound,
who said:
It's not just Pattaya city shit to worry about, there's a whole petro-chemical
industry up the coast pumping out who knows what, plus all of Bangkok's crap
coming down the Chao Phraya River.
Norton disturbingly expanded on this theme: The quality of Pattaya sewage
treatment is a factor in polluting its beach. Even if their sewage treatment
was so good the output could be bottled and sold as Pattaya Pure Mountain
Spring water, Pattaya beach would still have a significant pollution problem.
Being "down stream", everything dumped into the Chao Phraya River (industrial
waste, sewage, city drainage water), Samut Prakan (industrial waste, pesticides,
prawn farming waste) and Chon Buri (industrial waste and pesticides) ends up
at Pattaya beach and everywhere else on the Eastern seaboard albeit somewhat
diluted from the source.
Loy Toy succinctly hit another nail on the head when he said: Pattaya, in fact the
whole of Chon Buri Province, has a major problem, and that is development versus infrastructure availability.
A great example of Thailand in general. Not enough infrastructure to handle the
amount of traffic.
I live quite close to the biggest waste water plant in Pattaya and it has not been
upgraded in the last 10 years yet the number of people living in the area has
grown 100 fold.
Without going into too much detail I have had senior council officials stand in
front of me and admit they have allowed whole communities to pipe their sewage
pipes directly into the storm water systems and those pipes go nowhere near the
waste water treatment plants.
This water ends up flowing into Pattaya Bay, everyone knows it including the TAT
and the hotel association.
At this stage I would at least like to balance this commentary with some credible
arguments as to why the waters of Pattaya ARE cleaner than we think. However
except for the original poster, Socal, who gamely (and amusingly) stuck to his
guns, even though he had to move his own goalposts to do it, there wasn’t one
serious rebuttal of the argument that Pattaya Bay is indeed filthy and hazardous
to health.
Next edition – Pattaya’s Polluted Beaches Part 2.
All comments or Web Board tipoffs gratefully received at jt[at]pattayaone.net