A downtown international school this week began demolition work on a plot of land at the order of the city, which has said was developed illegally despite being a public easement.
Construction workers this morning were at work demolishing the school’s football field, and work had begun on restoring a seasonal waterway that decades ago was a natural flood mitigation feature, according to neighbors and historical maps.
To the east of the field, excavation work had begun on what appeared to be a small waterway. A construction official told a Coconuts reporter this morning that they plan to continue extending the waterway to where it once flowed behind the home of Mayta Lerttamrab, who has rallied his neighbors to campaign for City Hall to take action.
A worker at the site told Coconuts this morning that the school initiated the work Sunday.
Workers had also toppled the wall behind another neighbor, 60-year-old Muhammad Mi Suwan. Muhammad, who was one of the several to sign a June petition for Bangkok Gov. Chadchart Sittiput to intervene, said the school did not notify him that his wall would be destroyed.
“They didn’t warn me about this construction,” he said. “I am thinking of building a small waterway connected to the school to help redirect the flow of water.”
Muhammad, like Mayta and other neighbors, has complained that the school expanded years ago onto land that had long been a public right of way, served as a foot corridor to the nearby Khlong Tan canal, and helped prevent flooding by collecting, redirecting and absorbing surface runoff.
Muhammad said flooding at his home worsened after the school developed the land with structures, a lawn, the football field and other facilities. The lack of drainage led to flooding that damaged his garden, he added.
The construction worker, who did not offer his name, said it would take an additional three to four days to finish the waterway, as well as a meter-high footbridge for students to cross it. He said it was being built with the Watthana District Office’s blessing.
“We are building the waterway because the school has obtained permission from the district office to build it,” he said.
It was unclear when public access to the land would be restored. St. Andrews’ International Primary School is located just off Pridi Banomyong Road in the Phra Khanong area of Bangkok’s Watthana District.
“I feel that this is too late because we have had a lot of flooding in the soi this year,” Mayta, the activist neighbor, told Coconuts. “The flooding could be prevented if the school would have followed the district office order by clearing out everything in August.”
While the conflict between the school and city has gone unresolved for over a year, neither side has been willing to publicly discuss it.
Calls to the district office this morning went unanswered. Since Coconuts began reporting on the issue, district officials have declined to respond to questions or provide related public documents.
A call to the school this morning was answered by a volunteer staff member identified only as Rick, who told Coconuts he was unaware of the issue. He said the school was on winter break and would reopen in January.
School officials have declined to publicly address its dispute with the city. A woman who in the past has identified herself as an anonymous school spokesperson did not answer her phone today.
On Oct. 11, the Watthana District Office announced that it would send a team the next day to demolish the campus structures encroaching on the land and ordered the school to pay for the work within 30 days of it commencing. The next day, the district dispatched workers to remove patches of grass planted atop the strip of public land.
In August, the school did demolish one multi-story building, but its anonymous rep said at the time that it considered the land its property nonetheless. Officials announced publicly afterward that St. Andrews was complying with its orders.
Back in February, Watthana district officials said in a letter that they had filed a legal complaint against the school for not complying with a November 2021 order to remove the structures and return the land to its natural state. Mayta filed his own lawsuit against the school in 2020 over its neighborhood impacts.
In a September letter, district officials repeated to Mayta that they had evidence the structures and modifications were built without permission. The letter detailed the unauthorized work and concluded that they amounted to building code violations.
The school has insisted that it relied on old aerial photographs to conclude that the community waterway no longer existed prior to developing the land. The district has refuted that, with Watthana District Director Suchira Silanon saying in July that the school had developed the land illegally. The district reiterated that in September.
Additional writing and reporting Todd Ruiz
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