Shal­iza?Has­sanali

A 2009 re­port on the con­tro­ver­sial high­way from Debe shows that res­i­dents ob­ject­ed to it from the start-but the al­ter­na­tive route they pro­posed would have had a greater en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact than the one even­tu­al­ly se­lect­ed.

En­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh, head of the High­way Re-route Move­ment, is car­ry­ing out a hunger strike over plans by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to pro­ceed with work on the ex­ten­sion of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way from Debe to Mon De­sir. The $7 bil­lion high­way will con­nect San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin.

The com­par­i­son re­port com­piled by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port on the Debe to San Fran­cique Road seg­ment re­veals a list of en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns-in­clud­ing wide­spread flood­ing-re­lat­ed to the high­way con­struc­tion in the wet­land.

It al­so records, how­ev­er, that hu­man ac­tiv­i­ty has al­ready en­croached heav­i­ly on the wet­land. The re­port is en­ti­tled "Na­tion­al High­way Pro­gramme Trunk Road Ex­pan­sion Com­po­nent Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion."

"To con­struct a high­way seg­ment be­tween Debe and San Fran­cique Road, it is a re­gret­table but un­avoid­able ne­ces­si­ty that both hous­es and land with­out build­ings will have to be ac­quired," the re­port stat­ed.

The re­port com­pared routes pro­posed by the min­istry's de­sign team and an­oth­er sug­gest­ed by res­i­dents, who ob­ject­ed to the orig­i­nal route be­cause it would dis­place them. Far from be­ing con­cerned about the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact of the high­way, how­ev­er, the res­i­dents sug­gest­ed a route that would have cut straight through the mid­dle of the Oropouche la­goon.

Hu­man ac­tiv­i­ty en­croach­ment

In April 2006, as part of the high­way de­sign ex­er­cise the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) un­der­took an as­sign­ment to de­lin­eate the South Oropouche Wet­land, show­ing the three routes be­ing con­sid­ered. The South Oropouche Wet­land is a large area ex­tend­ing from the coast of Mos­qui­to Creek in the north, al­most to the San Fer­nan­do-Siparia Erin Road in the east, be­yond San Fran­cique Road at its south­ern lim­it and al­most to Fyz­abad Road at the west­ern side.

With­in this area is a mix of pro­tect­ed man­grove for­est. "Hu­man ac­tiv­i­ty has en­croached heav­i­ly in­to the swamp over the decades and there are now large ar­eas of wet pas­ture, sug­ar cane, res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment and oil­field ac­tiv­i­ties," the re­port re­vealed. As part of an En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment process for the high­way ex­ten­sion, the re­port said, pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions were held in Au­gust 2006 and Feb­ru­ary 2007.

Res­i­dents raised ob­jec­tions over the hous­es and lands which need­ed to be ac­quired and sug­gest­ed an al­ter­na­tive align­ment west of Bun­see Trace cross­ing the South Oropouche Wet­land area and the Ten­nant Hills. In re­sponse to the ob­jec­tions, a de­sign team de­vel­oped two new align­ments with the ob­jec­tive of re­duc­ing the num­ber of hous­es to be ac­quired.

The orig­i­nal route was shift­ed slight­ly east­ward. Align­ments One and Two are vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal, the re­port stat­ed in its con­clu­sion. A route cor­re­spond­ing close­ly to the route pro­posed by res­i­dents was de­vel­oped which was out­lined as Align­ment Three. The es­ti­mat­ed cost of con­struc­tion of ei­ther Align­ment One or Two was $940 mil­lion.

Align­ment Three's cost had not been cal­cu­lat­ed but was ex­pect­ed to be much high­er, be­cause it made the high­way longer. The num­ber of hous­es to be ac­quired for Align­ments One, Two and Three was 78. Align­ments One and Two re­quired 58 hectares be­tween Debe and San Fran­cique Road, while Align­ment Three was es­ti­mat­ed to utilise 65 hectares. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 hectares of Align­ments 1 and 2 were wet pas­ture, but the fig­ure for Align­ment 3 was 47 hectares.

En­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues

Un­der the sub-head­ing "Al­ter­ation of the Flow Regime," the re­port said all the routes had the po­ten­tial to lead to se­vere flood­ing in ar­eas to the east that could cause "ma­jor eco­nom­ic loss­es and al­so cre­ate se­ri­ous in­con­ve­nience to area res­i­dents." It was sug­gest­ed in the re­port that it would be nec­es­sary to place "equal­i­sa­tion cul­verts" along all three routes to mit­i­gate this risk.

Pol­lu­tion from ve­hi­cles was raised since it was be­lieved that there was a re­al con­cern as­so­ci­at­ed with a spill of in­dus­tri­al chem­i­cals since it was ex­pect­ed that the high­way will be used to trans­port such chem­i­cals to oil­fields and oth­er in­dus­tries in the south­west penin­su­la of Trinidad.

"No align­ment ap­pears to frag­ment large ar­eas of wet­land which are not al­ready frag­ment­ed by res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment or farm­ing." How­ev­er, the re­port stat­ed that there were greater en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns, con­struc­tion costs and risk of un­fore­seen cost in­creas­es with Align­ment 3.

Among the con­cerns raised by the IMA in the 15-page re­port, which the Sun­day Guardian ob­tained, are:

• loss of habi­tat

• frag­men­ta­tion of habi­tat

• al­ter­ation of the flow regime

• noise im­pacts on birds and wildlife

• pol­lu­tion from ve­hi­cles

• po­ten­tial for the in­tro­duc­tion of non-na­tive species

• po­ten­tial for in­creased squat­ting.

Warn­er: Re­port lack­ing in de­tail

For­mer works and trans­port min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, asked to com­ment on the re­port, said he knew noth­ing about it, but al­so claimed it was "very in­ad­e­quate in sev­er­al ar­eas. It is so lack­ing in de­tail and could not stand up to scruti­ny or mer­it for any Gov­ern­ment could look at."

Asked what en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact the con­struc­tion of the high­way would have, he said these mat­ters had been tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion and would be act­ed up­on. "You will ob­serve that [with] the high­way that is go­ing to Point Fortin every ef­fort is be­ing made to skirt the Oropouche la­goon and not go through it. I will tell you al­so that the con­trac­tors are do­ing the lat­est in tech­nol­o­gy to pre­vent any flood­ing in the area."

Warn­er re­ferred the Sun­day Guardian to Works Min­is­ter Em­manuel George, but he could not reached af­ter sev­er­al calls to his cell phone went unan­swered. Hous­ing Min­is­ter and Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Dr Roodal Mooni­lal in re­sponse to an e-mail, wrote: "The project re­ceived a CEC (Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance). I imag­ine the EMA (En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty) would have con­sid­ered these mat­ters."

For­mer works and trans­port min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said he did not re­call the re­port. "I do re­mem­ber a pre­sen­ta­tion made in or around 2008 where it point­ed out that there were two en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive ar­eas in that gen­er­al sec­tion of the high­way, one be­ing the pro­tect­ed for­est in the Siparia area and the oth­er the Oropouche la­goon."

Im­bert said he re­mem­bered the en­gi­neer say­ing one of the chal­lenges they had was to avoid the two sen­si­tive ar­eas, and that a so­lu­tion was be­ing worked on. Im­bert said he re­fused to ad­vance the pro­pos­al of the high­way to con­nect San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin be­fore the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion.

"I de­lib­er­ate­ly re­fused, in my ca­pac­i­ty as min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port, to ad­vance any pro­pos­al for an award of con­tract for the Point Fortin High­way pri­or to the May 24, 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion be­cause I did not want any­body to say that a huge con­tract had been award­ed on the eve of the elec­tion."

Im­bert said there were at­tempts to get him to do so, but: "I re­fused point blank, be­cause I did not want to get in any con­fu­sion with al­le­ga­tions of se­cret deals lead­ing up to the elec­tion." As a re­sult, no de­ci­sion was tak­en on the se­lec­tion of a con­trac­tor or the award of a con­tract.

Af­ter the elec­tion, Im­bert said, the project went dead for about six months, then re­vived to­ward the end of 2010. He said the con­tract was ex­e­cut­ed and fi­nalised very quick­ly, which was a bone of con­tention. Dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign, Im­bert said, mem­bers of the UNC ob­ject­ed to the con­struc­tion of the high­way.

"One of the things about these very large projects that have a huge im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment is that you must give your­self wig­gle room or an es­cape hatch to get out if a prob­lem oc­curs with re­spect to the route align­ment. You must have claus­es in these con­tracts to give your­self the flex­i­bil­i­ty to deal with un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances. So you shut down one sec­tion of the project and work on the oth­ers."

In this case, Im­bert said, the Gov­ern­ment could shut down the Debe to Mon De­sir sec­tion and work on the Point Fortin end.