Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents of sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties in San­ta Cruz and Mar­aval say flood­ing re­mains a per­sis­tent con­cern, as they fear that nar­row drains and poor waste dis­pos­al could wors­en the im­pact of heavy rain­fall lat­er this year.

On Sun­day, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice is­sued a Yel­low Lev­el Ad­verse Weath­er Alert, with par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on south­ern and east­ern parts of the coun­try.

How­ev­er, res­i­dents in the north-west say they are al­so vul­ner­a­ble to flood­ing and are wor­ried about what lies ahead dur­ing the rainy sea­son.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, San­ta Cruz res­i­dent Omega Pe­ters said she has lived on Con­rad Street, off Can­taro Ex­ten­sion Road, since 2000 and has ex­pe­ri­enced sig­nif­i­cant flood­ing al­most every year.

She said flood­wa­ters have come with­in inch­es of the doorstep of her home, which is lo­cat­ed along the bank of a stream flow­ing from Up­per San­ta Cruz.

Point­ing to de­bris and dis­card­ed plas­tic bot­tles along the wa­ter­course, Pe­ters said she was con­cerned that even a few min­utes of heavy rain­fall could cause wa­ter lev­els to rise rapid­ly. She said fast-mov­ing cur­rents of­ten car­ry tree limbs and oth­er de­bris from near­by forest­ed ar­eas, block­ing wa­ter­ways and caus­ing flood­ing through­out the com­mu­ni­ty.

“It’s a se­ri­ous wor­ry be­cause when the wa­ter comes down with trees some­times, it blocks up the en­tire front of my shop and we have to clear it our­selves. I don’t know how heavy it will come this year.

“Some­times we even have to put sand­bags out­side the door­way.”

Pe­ters said wa­ter­ways were cleared of bush­es and oth­er veg­e­ta­tion about two years ago, but the over­growth has since re­turned. She warned that veg­e­ta­tion, com­bined with oth­er de­bris, could be­come trapped be­neath bridges and in nar­row sec­tions of the drainage net­work, in­creas­ing the flood risk.

A Can­taro res­i­dent, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said the open­ings be­neath some bridges were too nar­row to ac­com­mo­date the large vol­umes of wa­ter flow­ing from the sur­round­ing hills dur­ing heavy rain­fall.

He said rub­bish, dis­card­ed car parts and even fur­ni­ture are of­ten washed down­stream dur­ing ma­jor down­pours.

“And what do you think is go­ing to hap­pen when some­thing the size of a ta­ble or a wash­ing ma­chine gets stuck un­der a space that’s on­ly that wide?

“Every­thing else com­ing af­ter is go­ing to get clogged, and that is where the trou­ble starts.

“In my opin­ion, they need to break up that por­tion of the road and re­design the drainage. This can’t con­tin­ue the way it is.”

Both res­i­dents agreed that while flood­ing over the past two years has not been as se­vere as in pre­vi­ous years, they re­main con­cerned that in­tense rain­fall could still trig­ger flash flood­ing.

Sim­i­lar con­cerns were raised sev­er­al miles away in Mar­aval, where res­i­dents of Hills­boro said the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) has re­sult­ed in less fre­quent clean-up ex­er­cis­es, in­creas­ing their fears of flood­ing.

“We al­ways have prob­lems with flood­ing most years, but our biggest con­cern is that it might be worse be­cause of the bush.

“Look at the sides of those streams. The bush is every­where. Mar­aval hasn’t been cleaned in more than a year, so we need ur­gent as­sis­tance.”

Res­i­dents of Eck­el Av­enue al­so com­plained that flood­ing is of­ten caused by il­le­gal dump­ing by peo­ple from out­side the com­mu­ni­ty.

One home­own­er, who al­so re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said the de­sign of the area’s drainage sys­tem al­lows bulky garbage from com­mu­ni­ties as far away as Dibe, off Long Cir­cu­lar Road, to be­come lodged in nar­row un­der­ground wa­ter­ways.

“We heard from garbage col­lec­tors them­selves that they won’t go to Dibe to col­lect the rub­bish, so peo­ple take it up­on them­selves to throw it in­to the drain. Then that is when it caus­es prob­lems for us all the way down here.

“Some of the res­i­dents around here even call this street ‘Lit­tle Venice’ af­ter the city in Italy. It gets that bad at times.”

The res­i­dent ac­knowl­edged that the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion has car­ried out clean-up ex­er­cis­es in the area, in­clud­ing on his street, but said keep­ing the wa­ter­ways clear re­mains a chal­lenge.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions via What­sApp to Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time.