People to be informed on Pak Bara deep-sea port [on Thailand's Andaman Sea Coastline]

BANGKOK, July 26 -- As plans to construct Pak Bara deep-sea port in the southern province of Satun were already delayed due to opposition by provincial people, Chula Sukmanop, director-general of Marine Department, said the department officials would try to explain to them how important the port would be.

PTTGC faces Samet spill legal action

Ao Phrao slick a marine disaster, governor says State agencies are preparing to file a lawsuit against PTT Global Chemical Plc (PTTGC) for compensation over the environmental damage caused by the oil spill from its offshore pipeline on Saturday. The slick had spread across Ao Phrao on the resort island of Samet in eastern Rayong early yesterday and was  threatening nearby marine sanctuaries. Authorities and more than 500 PTT employees have been struggling to prevent the slick spreading at the beach.

Refiner apologises for oil spill damage

PTT Global Chemical Plc (PTTGC) apologised on Monday for the oil spill from its pipeline that has damaged a beach on Koh Samet, one of the country's most popular tourist destinations, and promised to complete the clean up and restoration by Thursday.

Paradise lost :Shocking pictures show how a beautiful beach in Thailand turned black after a devastating oil spill

Destruction ... oil has blanketed the idyllic beach - By JACK LOSH 

A BEAUTIFUL beach popular with Brit tourists in Thailand has turned black after a devastating oil spill. 

The heavy crude washed up on idyllic Samet Island today after 50 tonnes of oil gushed from a leaky pipeline (near Map Tha Phut) over the weekend.

Tourists were warned to stay away as hundreds of clean-up workers in white bio-hazard suits descended on the disaster zone to scrape the white sands clean.

Oil spill: Tourism Authority of Thailand Ordered Visitors to Stay Off Beaches

Tourists on Thailand’s eastern beaches were greeted today with black waves of crude oil washed up on a beach at. ”We closed off Prao Bay on Samet to tourists so authorities can clean up the water and beach,” said Chuchart Oncharoen, Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) director for Rayong province.

Samet Island, about 3 kilometres off the coast of Rayong (Map Ta Phut)  and 150kilometres south-east of Bangkok, is a popular getaway for Thais and foreigners living in the capital. The island attracts about 1 million visitors a year, mostly on weekends.

“Prao Bay is on the west coast of Samet, but most of the island’s hotels and resorts are on the east coast, which has not been affected by the spill,” Chuchart said.

Lesson of special economic zone from Mataput Ranong, Thailand

Villagers fear Dawei Project will destroy their way of life

The local people in Ka Moe Thway area, Tavoy (Dawei) town, in southern Burma have called for the Thai government to not to build dirty industry near their homes.

On September 20, around 200 villagers, who live along the Dawei-Kanchanaburi road, constructed by the Thai Italian-Thai Development Company, gathered in Kaw Htee Lor village to pray for a stop to the destruction of their livelihoods by the impact of the construction of the Dawei-Kachanaburi Road and the Dawei Industry Zone.

Press Announcement: Stop Patronizing Dawei Project, Stop Public Debt Hikes

Mae Moh Coal-Fired Power Plant

From Ma Ta Phut to Burma

ထား​ဝယ္အထူး​စီး​ပြား​ေရး​ဇုန္ႏွင့္​ ျမန္မာ့​ဖြံ့​ၿဖိုး​ တိုး​တက္မႈ

အညစ္ညမ္း​ဆံုး​ လ်ွပ္စစ္ဓာတ္အား​ထုတ္လုပ္မႈရဲ့​ ထား​ဝယ္သဘာဝဝန္း​က်င္အ​ေပၚ က်​ေရာက္နိုင္မည့္​ အနၲရာယ္မ်ား

ဖြံ့​ၿဖိုး​ဆဲနိုင္ငံတနိုင္ငံရဲ့​ အထူး​စီး​ပြား​ေရး​ဇုန္​ေတြမွာ နိုင္ငံတကာစက္မႈလုပ္ငန္း​ႀကီး​ေတြ လာ​ေရာက္ရင္း​ႏွီး​ျမႈပ္ႏွံခ်င္ၾကတဲ့​ အ​ေၾကာင္း​ရင္း​က အလုပ္သမား​ေဈး​ေပါ​ေပါနဲ့​ရရွိရံု၊​ အခြန္အထူး​ကင္း​လြတ္ခြင့္​ရရွိရံုမ်ွမဟုတ္ဘဲ ထိုနိုင္ငံအစိုး​ရက စက္မႈ လုပ္ငန္း​ရွင္မ်ား​အလိုက် သဘာဝဝန္း​က်င္ဆိုင္ရာ တင္း​က်ပ္တဲ့​စည္း​မ်ဉ္း​ဥပ​ေဒ​ေတြ မထား​ရွိတဲ့​ အခ်က္ဟာလည္း​ အဓိကပါဝင္​ေနပါတယ္။

Dawei: Development or Destruction

Burmese and Thai researchers speaking at a conference last week in Bangkok fear that the Dawei Special Industrial Zone planned for southern Burma will have severe negative impacts on thousands of local people as well as the environmental.

Rally against mega-projects blocks traffic in Chumphon

By The Nation

More than 300 people gathered on Phet Kasem Road in Chumphon's Tha Sae district yesterday to express opposition to the government's planned mega-projects in the South.

The demonstrators wore green crab masks and staged a "mass-planking" event - in which groups of people lie motionless, face down, with their arms by their sides - on the road, blocking traffic for several hours.

Tavoy’s forewarning

By DVB

In the late 1980s Thailand embarked on an ambitious project to transform a popular stretch of coastline east of Bangkok into the country’s largest industrial estate. Ten years later however health experts found that Rayong province, home to the 25 sq. kilometre Maptaphut complex, had Thailand’s highest cancer rates. Residents there had long been complaining that the development of the site, which includes petrochemcial and gas separation plants, a deep sea port and plastics factories, had brought with it a toxic burden – parents lost their children to cancer, and the  fallout of job losses and illnesses ruptured the social fabric of the town, which began to experience high HIV and suicide rates. Years of popular resistance eventually forced 76 companies their to halt operations.

Tavoy port risks ‘dirty’ industry frenzy

Mechanical diggers on the pristine beaches near the sleepy fishing town of Dawei are a sign that change is coming to the remote corner of Burma – but not necessarily for the better.

Big shift to Dawei predicted

 Map Ta Phut and South lose appeal

 by BANGKOK POST

Thai heavy industry is likely to shift to industrial estates in Burma's western coastal city of Dawei instead of setting up facilities in southern Thailand or Map Ta Phut, warns the government's economic think-tank.

Case Study of Mae Moh Power Plant, Lampang

Mae Moh and Ma Tab Phut Case Study

Villagers oppose coal-fired power plant

By Bangkok Post

About 600 villagers from Sanamchaikhet and Phanom Sarakham districts in Chachoengsao on Thursday blocked highway 331 (Rayong-Sa Kaew) in protest against the construction of a coal-fueled electricity generation plant in the province’s No304 industrial estate, reports said.

Locals oppose deep sea port project, fearing a repeat of Mab Ta Phut problems

Over 500 Satun residents oppose the Pak Bara deep-sea port project for fear of impacts on the environment and local livelihoods, as has happened in the Mab Ta Phut Eastern Seaboard.

Map Ta Phut Industrial Development: Changes and Threats to Sustainability of Environment and Communities

Map Ta Phut for MK Watch [June 2010]