On April 24, a fire was started in the village in Fondes Amandes, St Ann's, by an irresponsible, delinquent gardener. Despite all efforts by the National Reforestation and Watershed Management team based in the Fondes Amandes Community Reforestation Project (FACRP), it spread out of control. A request to have the Bambi Bucket brought in to action failed as the helicopter lacked fuel.There continues to be public apathy to the crisis of loss of forest cover in our urban watersheds.
A January 2014 article in the Guardian stated that the T&T Government had received an IDB loan of US$120 million to be spent over five years to address flooding in Port-of-Spain.Minister of the environment Ganga Singh was quoted as saying they were going to upgrade the drainage system. Clogged drains in the city do contribute to flooding–but ultimately, flooding is a measure of surface run-off.
The earliest civilisations depended on the annual floods to return nutrients to their croplands and they knew enough not to build any permanent structures below the high water mark.In more recent times, because of population pressure, we have ignored this reality; and Port-of-Spain is a case in point.
When the Spanish settled in the area they named the river that ran along (what is now) Observatory Street across Park Street down Frederick Street across Woodford Square and down Chacon Street, Rio Tragarita. (Sp tragar: to swallow or engulf; + ita: diminutive ie "The Little one who engulfs.")This forty-foot chasm was in the habit of regularly washing large parts of the town out into the Gulf of Paria until Governor Chacon had its course diverted to its present route. Yet the problem of flooding persists.
In a healthy tropical ecosystem, when rain falls, the first thing it hits is an uninterrupted canopy of leaves 60-100 feet above the ground.This breaks up the raindrops into a fine mist and large drops rolling off the leaves.These fall to the forest floor where they meet a one-foot-thick layer of rotting leaves and a tangle of roots.The water has no choice but to percolate down through the spaces between the soil particles until it meets bedrock, where it forms the water table.
Wherever the bedrock comes to the surface, springs happen, which are the sources of rivers.In the Port-of-Spain watershed, the integrity of this system was first severely compromised for the sake of growing cacao, coffee and sugar cane to feed the addictions of the metropole, leading to increased surface runoff.In St Ann's/Cascade, some of these estates survived into recent decades and in fact the secondary growth, where it exists, has re-established a healthy canopy.
Bush fires caused by uncontrolled burning by gardeners and delinquents starting in 1987 have reduced the ridges of our watershed to a fire climax zone of bull grass and cocorite, leading to further increases.Then in the late 60s and early 70s the developers moved in.Wherever the rain meets galvanize, concrete, pitch and manicured lawns, there is 100 per cent surface runoff.
At the root of the problem is a rampant, uncontrolled population explosion and centralised development that leads to urban sprawl at the expense of forest cover.The long-term strategy for reducing flooding has to involve public and private institutional support for people to be able to make a living planting a wide variety of trees that produce material valuable for humans, so that the canopy is re-established on the ridges of our watersheds.
This could include fruit and edible nut species as well as plants for oils and resins, fibre and medicines for a post-petroleum economy.
John Stollmeyer
via e-mail