Garbage Dump Perfumed To Please Queen

Officials have doused a garbage dump with truckloads of air fresheners to sweeten a stench offensive to Thailand’s Queen Sirikit, a news report said Friday.

The dump’s odor aggravated the queen’s allergies each time she made a weekly visit to her palace in the town of Ayutthaya, 45 miles north of Bangkok, the Bangkok Post newspaper reported.

Local officials perfumed the site after she complained.

Ayutthaya was the capital of the kingdom that later became known as Thailand. The royal family keeps a palace there, six miles downwind from the offending dump.

The open pit contains industrial waste and rubbish generated by 70,000 people, and 60 tons of fresh garbage are added each day.

Ayutthaya lacks a modern waste treatment facility. The air fresheners were an expensive, short-term measure until the town can build an incinerator or a more sanitary landfill, the paper quoted the town’s deputy mayor, Damrong Kerdpitak, as saying.