Over the years, some of the caus­es of the flood­ing ex­pe­ri­enced in T&T have been at­trib­uted to blocked drains, in­ad­e­quate drainage, im­prop­er plan­ning and unau­tho­rised de­vel­op­ment. We have seen var­i­ous gov­ern­ments em­bark on clean­ing and widen­ing of drains and cre­ation of catch­ment pits. Still, im­prop­er plan­ning and unau­tho­rised de­vel­op­ment go on ram­pant­ly.

One on­ly has to check in the var­i­ous cities and bor­ough coun­cils, as well as the re­gion­al?cor­po­ra­tions, find out who is the city en­gi­neer and, most im­por­tant, what are their qual­i­fi­ca­tions and sup­port staff. I bet you would find they are lack­ing in num­bers and qual­i­ty.

I vis­it­ed a friend's home in?Good­wood Park about two years ago, with re­gards to cracks that de­vel­oped in her walls. This per­son has a three-storey ed­i­fice with not gut­ter­ing, al­most bor­der­ing on the edge of the prop­er­ty, with an eight-inch drain at the sides and rear. I ques­tioned the ef­fec­tive­ness of such drains where rain falls, and the re­sponse was, "It's the neigh­bours' prob­lems."

Where are our city en­gi­neers and build­ing in­spec­tors??How can an in­sur­ance com­pa­ny in­sure such a struc­ture? Now, with­in the past two years, I've no­ticed a road cut from Cas­cade, go­ing east through the hills in­to San­ta Cruz. I do hope homes would not be built there, be­cause the floods have since be­gun in San­ta Cruz.

On­ly last month we vis­it­ed Aripo and found an­oth­er hor­ror sto­ry is in the mak­ing. At the 1,300-foot el­e­va­tion, some­one has cleared the veg­e­ta­tion on his es­tate, and the rains have be­gun to de­grade the top­soil. Who gave the ap­proval? Who mon­i­tored the de­vel­op­ment of land above the 500-foot el­e­va­tion lev­el lim­it?

We have lapsed se­vere­ly in im­ple­ment­ing prop­er con­trols to pre­serve our en­vi­ron­ment.?Could not the dys­func­tion­al?EMA, and APE, ar­chi­tec­tur­al and oth­er en­gi­neer­ing bod­ies get to­geth­er to re­de­fine lim­its and bound­aries for in-progress and fu­ture de­vel­op­ment? Then, most im­por­tant­ly, could we not em­ploy du­ly qual­i­fied in­di­vid­u­als re­spon­si­ble for val­u­at­ing, ap­prov­ing and in­spect­ing all build­ings and de­vel­op­ments? Are we in?T&T bent on be­ing all mon­ey and no brains?

Richard Ram­bar­ran

Preysal?Cou­va