Mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures will be put in place at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s Re­al Springs de­vel­op­ment in Val­sayn and Riverdale, and Har­mo­ny Hall in Gas­par­il­lo fol­low­ing the re­cent flood­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by ten­ants.

This was dis­closed by HDC chair­man Noel Gar­cia dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view, as he ad­dressed how the HDC would re­spond fol­low­ing flood­ing ex­pe­ri­enced in those com­mu­ni­ties.

Gar­cia said the mea­sures are of sim­i­lar na­ture to what they put in place in the Green­vale area af­ter its dis­as­trous floods in 2018.

He said the HDC has over 600 de­vel­op­ments through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go and ad­mit­ted that on­ly re­cent­ly, three of those de­vel­op­ments suf­fered some type of flood­ing. He, how­ev­er, made it clear that the re­cent floods had noth­ing to do with poor in­fra­struc­tur­al work or any oth­er fault by the HDC.

“The Min­is­ter of Works and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment said the rain­fall was un­prece­dent­ed, seen as a re­sult of cli­mate change. The month of No­vem­ber has all the records of the amount of rain, which is what caus­es the flood­ing, an ex­ces­sive amount of rain­fall,” Gar­cia said.

“We can do as much as we can but it is re­al­ly an act of God,” he added.

Fol­low­ing the ad­verse floods in Green­vale in 2018, Gar­cia said as a re­sult of the mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures put in place, that area, this time, had ab­solute­ly no flood­ing. He as­sured that ad­di­tion­al mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures were com­ing for oth­er de­vel­op­ments.

“In Re­al Springs, we in­tend to do sluice gates and pumps and that is part of our over­all mas­ter plan that the min­istry is work­ing on in con­junc­tion with the Latin Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank,” Gar­cia said.

Asked if some of the HDC de­vel­op­ments were built on flood­plains, Gar­cia replied: “The orig­i­nal de­vel­op­ment, Re­al Springs, is 50 years old and this time here, thou­sands of peo­ple were flood­ed out and those peo­ple were nev­er flood­ed be­fore. So, to say we built on a flood plain, where else would we build? And as I said, the Val­sayn Re­al Springs, that is the first time in decades that it has flood­ed. This was un­prece­dent­ed rain­fall,” Gar­cia said.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue, for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Dr Roodal Moo­nial said he had tak­en note of flood­ing in the Re­al Spring De­vel­op­ment and oth­er HDC es­tates. “We are ex­treme­ly proud that there has been no flood­ing in any es­tate of the HDC that was start­ed and com­plet­ed by the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship and the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion,” he said.

“We have places like Re­al Spring, Green­vale and so on, Orop­une and so on that the PNM has con­cep­tu­alised and built and did in­fra­struc­ture. We had warned that those had se­ri­ous prob­lems in terms of drainage, re­ten­tion ponds, wa­ter cours­es and so on so I am not sur­prised at all.”

He, how­ev­er, not­ed that his main con­cern now is that the rivers have not been cleared and cleaned.

“The riv­er mouths have not been dredged prop­er­ly and af­ter sev­en years of ne­glect, of dis­crim­i­na­tion, of in­com­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion, we are where we are,” he said.

“Trinidad is now wa­ter­world un­der the PNM. Ro­han Sinanan was chased out of St Joseph, Bam­boo on Tues­day and he will be chased out of every cor­ner of this is­land for his in­com­pe­tence and Row­ley him­self can­not touch the ground. I think he has gone in­to hid­ing as a re­sult of what is de­vel­op­ing across the is­land.”

Mean­while, Plan­ners So­ci­ety pres­i­dent Grace Les Fouris said an ap­pro­pri­ate land use plan­ning pol­i­cy needs to be for­mu­lat­ed and en­forced to ad­dress the flood­ing is­sue at hous­ing de­vel­op­ments.

Les Fouris said Green­vale was de­vel­oped in the flood­plain of the Ca­roni Riv­er and added that aside from the prob­lem of build­ing on flood­plains, there is the very trou­ble­some is­sue of hill­side de­vel­op­ment.

“Hous­ing de­vel­op­ment is in­creas­ing­ly be­ing placed on North­ern Range hill­sides, ne­ces­si­tat­ing the re­moval of veg­e­ta­tion, in­clud­ing for­est veg­e­ta­tion, and caus­ing an in­crease in the ex­tent of im­per­me­able sur­faces, de­creased per­co­la­tion rates, ero­sion, in­creased sur­face runoff and, hence, sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es in flood dis­charge and flash flood­ing,” Les Fouris said.