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Floods are expected to completely flood the city of Bangkok by 2030. City planners are working flat out on a new, gigantic sewage system to escape a disaster.
The tunnel llies 30 meters below the surface of the earth.
Facebook / ProgressiveThailand
E.r is five meters wide and runs over a length of 9.4 kilometers.
Facebook / ProgressiveThailand
Bangkok could be completely flooded in less than ten years.
Urban planners are desperately trying to prevent this from happening.
Among other things, they are building a new, huge sewage system at a depth of 30 meters.
The Thai metropolis of Bangkok must ensure that it can keep its head above water: In the future, weeks of rainfall could completely flood 96 percent of the city – the problem must be solved quickly and effectively.
The salvation lies – so the developers hope and developers – 30 meters below the surface: I.n a five meter wide tunnel that runs 9.4 kilometers in length. The tunnel has seven drainage stations along the route to Bangkok’s main river. The project and the portal should be inaugurated in February «Nation Thailand» reported.
Bangkok will be under water by 2030
In a June report by the environmental organization Greenpeace Asia, researchers estimated that Bangkok will be under water by 2030. Climate change is responsible for this – but not only. The urban planning of the past decades, which no longer has space available for water absorption in order to prevent flooding, also contributes to this.
The renowned landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom remembers her childhood, how Bangkok’s streets turned into rivers in the rainy season, so that she could even ride them in a small boat. The water could drain off every time, the houses in lower elevations stayed dry.
The fun stopped in 2011 when the floods reached a new high and the metropolis of Bangkok experienced the worst flood in its history. 800 people were killed. Since then it has been getting worse from year to year: Heavier rains have caused the drainage capacity to exceed 60 millimeters per hour, which means that water can now enter citiesn how Bangkok can no longer find its way to the sewage system, explains Wijitbusaba Marome, Director of the Research Department for Urban Future and Politics at Thammasat University “Bangkok Post”.
«We have to live with the water»
58-year-old Somjai Lamlamai tells us that there are now skyscrapers right in front of the canals “Mirror online”. «If it rains today, the water in my hut will back up like a pool»says the city dweller. Landscape architect Voraakhom knows why this is happening: Where there used to be green spaces that could store rainwater, there are paving stones and concrete. According to the architect, Bangkok is one of the cities with the fewest green spaces per capita to the portal “Designindaba”.
Voraakhom has been working to change this for years. She designed the Chulalongkorn Centenary Park – the first public one «lung» the city for nearly three decades. A system in the park catches the water that runs off in the rainy season and filters it. In the dry season, the collected water is used to irrigate the vegetation in the park.
The architect looks at the problem soberly: «We mustn’t be afraid of the water. We have to live with him. We have to make room for it for that.»
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