Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

With a deficit of $7.6 bil­lion out of a pro­ject­ed 2012 bud­get of $54.6 bil­lion, the res­i­dents of Debe are ques­tion­ing if the Gov­ern­ment has suf­fi­cient funds to cov­er the to­tal ex­pen­di­ture re­quired for the bil­lion-dol­lar San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin high­way project. Of that $54 bil­lion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an said the Gov­ern­ment plans to spend $6.9 bil­lion on in­fra­struc­ture alone. The Brazil­ian firm Con­stru­to­ra OAS Ltd has the con­tract to build the high­way, which is pro­ject­ed to cost $7.2 bil­lion, $2 bil­lion more than the orig­i­nal cost. Last Au­gust, Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er said the high­way would be 47 kilo­me­tres long with four lanes and 2.5 kilo­me­tres with two lanes and would stop in at the round­about in Point Fortin, near Dun­lop.

Debe res­i­dents told the Busi­ness Guardian dur­ing a road trip last week Thurs­day that the long term so­cio-eco­nom­ic im­pact of run­ning the high­way through Debe to Mon De­sir area would cost the Gov­ern­ment much more than orig­i­nal­ly pro­ject­ed. The es­ti­mat­ed cost from Debe to Mon De­sir is $3 bil­lion, said Wayne Kublals­ingh, en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist and lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

Kublals­ingh said this at the fam­i­ly home of Clif­ford and Eliz­a­beth Ramb­harose in Gand­hi Vil­lage. Oth­er res­i­dents agreed with Kublals­ingh, say­ing that $3 bil­lion could be saved if that leg of the high­way is rerout­ed.

Res­i­dents of Gopee Trace, Gand­hi Vil­lage and Seukaran Trace have many ques­tions:

• Can the Gov­ern­ment af­ford to ad­e­quate­ly and fair­ly com­pen­sate the res­i­dents for their homes and land?

• Can the Gov­ern­ment af­ford to ad­e­quate­ly com­pen­sate their loss of busi­ness and in­come?

• Does the Gov­ern­ment have suf­fi­cient funds to con­tin­u­ous­ly com­pen­sate flood vic­tims? Flood­ing is a ma­jor side ef­fect from pass­ing the high­way from Debe to Mon De­sir.

• De­mo­li­tion of the Debe mar­ket may cost $16 mil­lion.

• The re­moval and the cap­ping of oil wells and gas lines are an­oth­er cost.

• And, most im­por­tant­ly, where is the fund­ing com­ing from?

Is the Gov­ern­ment ready to deal with the 300 house­holds who may be dis­placed?

Last No­vem­ber, Works Min­is­ter Warn­er said in Par­lia­ment that it would cost Gov­ern­ment $2 bil­lion to cov­er land ac­qui­si­tion and dis­lo­ca­tion of res­i­dents.

Dis­rupt­ing agri­cul­tur­al land

Kublals­ingh, who, along with physi­cist Pe­ter Vine, launched ag­gres­sive protest ac­tion over the con­tro­ver­sial Alutrint smelter com­plex in La Brea, said UWI's re­search unit is in the process of test­ing and ver­i­fy­ing a hy­drol­o­gy study of the area, done by Gopee Trace res­i­dent Har­ryper­sad Dook­ie. Mak­ing ref­er­ence to a hy­drol­o­gy study and map, Dook­ie ex­plained to the Busi­ness Guardian the area the high­way would pass through is smack across the Oropouche La­goon. Dook­ie, a cane farmer, said the soil is agri­cul­tur­al­ly rich and frag­ile. Dook­ie said some parts of the area are above sea lev­el, while oth­ers are be­low sea lev­el. The four rivers that ex­ist in the area are be­low the coast­line; the wa­ter run­ning from those rivers emp­ty in­to the area. "Even though the four rivers have gates, which pre­vent the salt wa­ter from pen­e­trat­ing in land; when there is flood­ing, the same wa­ter from the east­ern ar­eas tends to set­tle over the land sur­face from as high as two to five feet."

"If the Gov­ern­ment builds a high­way in the la­goon area, it is def­i­nite­ly go­ing to flood the la­goon area and hun­dreds of hous­es from Debe to Bar­rack­pore, as far as the Val­ley Line, which is al­most sea lev­el to Clarke Road and even Moru­ga," Dook­ie said. He ex­plained that the la­goon area has a con­nec­tiv­i­ty stretch­ing eight to nine miles to the east. "This is the on­ly area wa­ter tends to set­tle in­to...it's a catch­ment area." He said from Debe to San Fran­cique is the on­ly pas­sage for wa­ter to flow in­to the sea.

A con­cerned Dook­ie said there would be a rapid in­crease in flood­ing when the high­way is built and would flood ar­eas that are not usu­al­ly flood­ed. "This is go­ing to have a tremen­dous im­pact on homes; agri­cul­ture lands as there are a few hun­dred cane farm­ers and res­i­dents whose liveli­hoods are sus­tained through agri­cul­ture." "We plant va­ri­ety of crops and we sup­ply the neigh­bour­ing gro­ceries and mar­kets, so if our liveli­hood is de­stroyed, plen­ty peo­ple would be left on the bread­line."

Man­grove, la­goons and ponds

Kublals­ingh ad­mit­ted he was ini­tial­ly scep­ti­cal about Dook­ie's study, but he en­gaged the UWI's re­search unit, which ver­i­fied Dook­ie's con­cerns. He said he was scep­ti­cal be­cause he thought that both the lo­cal and Brazil's OAS Con­stru­to­ra en­gi­neers would have done a de­tailed hy­drol­o­gy study, but re­alised it was not done. He said up­on his own in­ves­ti­ga­tion, he re­alised the en­gi­neers de­cid­ed to build nine bridges to help with the ex­ist­ing flow and 15 cul­verts, none of which would not solve the flood­ing prob­lem. Kublals­ingh said Dook­ie spoke of a dam wall 9.1 miles which must al­so be built to help con­tain the sur­face wa­ter on one side and the sea on the oth­er. "It al­so runs across the Oropouche La­goon; mak­ing an em­bank­ment six feet to eight feet high that would cause per­ma­nent flood­ing to the en­tire sys­tem of com­mu­ni­ties to its south and north. Note the pat­tern of sea-lev­el wet­lands-man­grove, la­goons, ponds-which ex­ist to the north of this pro­posed seg­ment and the hilly con­tours to the south and east."

This em­bank­ment, Kublals­ingh said, would de­stroy road and hy­dro­log­i­cal con­nec­tiv­i­ty in the area and would in­cur per­ma­nent costs. It is al­so the most cost­ly seg­ment, more than $3 bil­lion. It is 9.1 miles long. The en­tire sys­tem is 29.2 miles. The UWI study con­firmed this way would not solve the prob­lem, Kublals­ingh said. "We have pre­sent­ed our UWI re­search to the var­i­ous min­is­ters-the lat­est be­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an, who we met two Sat­ur­days ago at his El Do­ra­do con­stituen­cy of­fice." Kublals­ingh said Dook­er­an stat­ed he would look at the UWI study again and give feed­back.

Kublals­ingh said the High­way Re-route Move­ment is propos­ing that the Gov­ern­ment per­ma­nent­ly aborts the Mon De­sir to Debe route. Plan B: a high­way link be­tween the east­ern end of the Mos­qui­to Creek, across emp­ty Ca­roni state lands, and the Gol­con­da to Debe. The Mos­qui­to Creek, he ex­plained, is a straight road along the coast east of St Mary's Junc­tion and Ota­heite, and the Gol­con­da to Debe link is iden­ti­fied in the map.

Sec­ond­ly, he not­ed, the Gov­ern­ment should re­ha­bil­i­tate all out­ly­ing road sys­tems, par­tic­u­lar­ly old Ca­roni tasker roads in the dis­trict and fix all ex­ist­ing road sys­tems, many of which are in a per­ma­nent state of dis­re­pair. "This will add gen­uine con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the high­way sys­tem, a key com­po­nent of gen­uine de­vel­op­ment and progress."

So­cial im­pact

There are bumpy, wind­ing, pot­holed roads every­where: Sook­nanan Trace and Gand­hi Vil­lage and con­nect­ing roads were the worst. The roads are slant­ed and falling apart. The Busi­ness Guardian team in­ter­viewed a few res­i­dents who are heart­bro­ken and dis­tressed about hav­ing to give up their res­i­dence and, in some in­stances, in­her­i­tance. Res­i­dents com­plained of not re­ceiv­ing of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion from any gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial. Un­of­fi­cial­ly, they have heard that each fam­i­ly will re­ceive one lot of un­de­vel­oped land in Pe­tit Morne, St Madeleine.

A tear­ful 86-year-old Haz­i­fa Ma­haraj, in­her­it­ed about nine acres of land from her East In­di­an de­scen­dants at Seukaran Trace, Thick Vil­lage, Siparia Road. Ma­haraj, her head cov­ered in an orhni, whis­pered, "I have been liv­ing here 86 years, I can't ex­press how I feel right now." There's pain and hurt in her voice. Her head was slight­ly bent and her eyes filled with wa­ter. She drift­ed off, as if rem­i­nisc­ing, and said, "I would miss this qui­et place." It was about 2 pm, the sun was hot and the place was breezy, peace­ful. Ma­haraj, who has her own home, lives on the same land with her daugh­ter and son-in-law.

Pen­sion­ers Stel­la and Sad­dick Ali are al­so torn about hav­ing to move. The Alis said they could not put a val­ue or fig­ure to their land as it holds great sen­ti­men­tal val­ue. Sad­dick plants a va­ri­ety of cit­rus and root crops: peas, cas­sa­va, dasheen, bo­di, ba­nanas, co­conuts to help feed his fam­i­ly. The ex­cess pro­duce, Sad­dick said, are giv­en to his neigh­bours and sold to the mar­ket be­cause his fam­i­ly can­not sur­vive sole­ly on his pen­sion. Stel­la said she could not imag­ine start­ing life from scratch. "It's un­think­able. We are all pray­ing that the Gov­ern­ment changes its mind. This area is sa­cred to us." Speak­ing very strong words, Stel­la said, "I'd rather die than move." She ap­pealed to the car­ing side of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to lis­ten to their plight. "I am very dis­ap­point­ed with this Gov­ern­ment be­cause they had nev­er ex­pressed in their man­i­festo that they would be up­root­ing us."

One of Ali's neigh­bours, 66-year-old My­roon Nar­i­nesingh said she is "sick with wor­ry." "I am get­ting sick wor­ry­ing about giv­ing up my home. My hus­band had four strokes. It wor­ries me. I can't sleep. I am very un­hap­py." Nar­i­nesingh said her ma­jor con­cern is the lost of sup­port she usu­al­ly gets from neigh­bours and fears that she would not have ac­cess to a near­by phar­ma­cy and health fa­cil­i­ties. Most res­i­dents of Seukaran Trace-about six homes-are ail­ing and el­der­ly peo­ple who are sup­port­ed by their com­mu­ni­ty. They live as one. Mean­while, Hol­lis Ra­goo­nanan, who has an au­to garage busi­ness, said if he is re­lo­cat­ed, it would take him two years to set­tle down and start over his busi­ness. Ra­goo­nanan said he has no prob­lem with the high­way, but does not un­der­stand the log­ic pass­ing it through Debe to Mon De­sir. "They are of­fer­ing a lot of land in Pe­tit Morne but I have one acre of land that is val­ued about $5 mil­lion. They have to con­sid­er the loss of my busi­ness. "I am not sure they are will­ing to give me the true val­ue of my prop­er­ty. It took time, sweat and ef­fort to build my busi­ness and my life. There is no com­pen­sa­tion for that."

Read Part II in next week's Busi­ness Guardian