Feed: CNN.com - WORLD
Posted on: Wednesday, November 16, 2011 12:50 PM
Author: CNN.com - WORLD
Subject: Thailand: Super-canal may prevent floods

Thai authorities are considering the construction of a super-express waterway through Bangkok to prevent future floods similar to the one that has crippled the Thai capital and brought manufacturing in other parts of the country to a standstill.

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Thailand: Super-canal may prevent floods

By Peter Shadbolt, CNN

November 16, 2011 -- Updated 1050 GMT (1850 HKT)

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Thai authorities consider super-express waterway to prevent future floods
Under the plan, existing natural canals would be linked in 200-km "super-highway"
Super-canal would hold 1.6B cubic meters of water and massively speed drain run-off

(CNN) -- Thai authorities are considering the construction of a super-express waterway through Bangkok to prevent future floods similar to the one that has crippled the Thai capital and brought manufacturing in other parts of the country to a standstill.

A team of disaster experts from Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok is now investigating permanent solutions to the disaster that has left hundreds dead.

"One of the urgent solutions is a super-express floodway," Thanawat Jarupongsakul, from the university's Unit for Disaster and Land Information Studies, told the Bangkok Post.

Under the plan, existing natural canals -- some of them more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) long -- would be linked in a 200-km "super-highway" that would divert the course of floodwaters from the north.

The super-canal would hold 1.6 billion cubic meters of water and drain run-off at a rate of 6,000 cubic meters per second -- the equivalent of two and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools a second.

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"This idea is much cheaper than digging a new river as a floodway," Thanawat said.

He said the proposed scheme would involve the construction of a kilometer-wide exclusion zone next to the floodway to prevent properties from being inundated, and a raised highway on both side of the canal.

The super-express floodway would then drain upstream run-off directly into the sea.

The university team is also looking at other flood-prevention measures such as a better early-warning system, improved water resource management, a flood tax, the use of a flood-risk map for urban development and groundwater-use controls.

"Now, the government must stop [trying to] solve flood problems with political methods," Thanawat told the Bangkok Post. He said poor water management rather than excess rain had caused this year's severe flooding, adding that natural swamps in the west of Thailand's Central Plains, which once absorbed water flow, had been developed into industrial and residential areas, blocking the natural floodway.

While giant flood tunnels in the Bangkok metropolitan area could drain floodwater from the city, they could not cope with a massive inundation from the north.

"If there is no step forward, foreign investors will eventually disappear from the country and the next generation will be still worried whether flooding will happen or not," he said.