Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

What was meant to be a fresh start for many fam­i­lies in River­side South Corinth has turned in­to a night­mare, as res­i­dents com­plain that crum­bling in­fra­struc­ture and se­vere land ero­sion are threat­en­ing their homes and safe­ty.

Over 30 fam­i­lies live in the de­vel­op­ment, but prob­lems be­gan sur­fac­ing short­ly af­ter they moved in­to the homes in 2022.

Lara Dow­ell, home­own­er and di­rec­tor of Riverdale South Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny, said the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) has failed to con­struct re­tain­ing walls along the river­bank to se­cure res­i­dents’ prop­er­ties, re­sult­ing in ero­sion.

She added that the sit­u­a­tion wors­ened af­ter works to mit­i­gate flood­ing were car­ried out along the Cipero Riv­er.

Point­ing to a sec­tion of a road that has caved in and sunk sev­er­al feet, Dow­ell said: “In the past week, with the in­crease in rains, we’ve seen the col­lapse of the road, which is the turn­ing point for this side of the com­mu­ni­ty. We al­so see low­er down where there is in­creased land slip­page that threat­ens not just the homes but al­so the en­trance to the road.”

She said the home­own­er clos­est to the col­lapsed road moved out, fear­ing for her life af­ter notic­ing struc­tur­al cracks in her home.

A fam­i­ly liv­ing in a town­house had to be re­lo­cat­ed last year af­ter their build­ing be­gan slip­ping to­ward the riv­er. Dow­ell said at least six homes are di­rect­ly af­fect­ed, while oth­er res­i­dents have be­gun notic­ing cracks in their prop­er­ties.

She added: “Cur­rent­ly, be­cause of poor drainage, when there is heavy rain, wa­ter backs up and floods our yards. I can’t put a wall around my prop­er­ty be­cause then my neigh­bour will be flood­ed out due to the in­fra­struc­ture. We have is­sues where the box drain is on top of the land and, to add in­sult to in­jury, there is a hole punched in the bot­tom of the box drain to ac­cess the gut­ter­ing for the house.”

De­spite nu­mer­ous vis­its by FEM­Col, an HDC sub­sidiary tasked with prop­er­ty main­te­nance, and re­peat­ed com­plaints via ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion, pho­tos, videos, and emails, noth­ing has been done to ad­dress res­i­dents’ con­cerns.

“Help us fix our com­mu­ni­ty. A lot of res­i­dents spent a lot of mon­ey to live here,” she lament­ed.

For Ak­i­lah Du­mas-Pat­ter­son, moth­er of a two-year-old, prob­lems be­gan as soon as her fam­i­ly moved in.

“We start­ed hav­ing is­sues with wa­ter build­ing up un­der the house… it’s al­ways un­der the house, to the point where we are see­ing fish­es,” she said.

She added that shift­ing has be­gun in the tank stand and the build­ing struc­ture it­self, erod­ing her hopes of pro­vid­ing a safe en­vi­ron­ment for her young son.

“My fear is ba­si­cal­ly one day wak­ing up to the whole house go­ing down with us. My fear is los­ing all our liveli­hoods. Some­times the sew­er backs up in­to our homes, which is nei­ther safe nor san­i­tary for us — we have a young child.”

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Do­ri­an Hen­ry, whose home sits be­side the riv­er, said, “I have lost about four feet of land.”

“When I con­tact­ed HDC, they said there were plans to re­store re­tain­ing walls along the river­bank for all the hous­es, but noth­ing has been done.”

In an at­tempt to pre­vent fur­ther ero­sion, he plant­ed bam­boo to hold the land.

He warned: “If they do not in­stall the walls, the en­tire river­way will be com­pro­mised,” po­ten­tial­ly lead­ing to se­vere flood­ing and struc­tur­al dam­age to homes.

Res­i­dents al­so raised con­cerns about the poor con­di­tion of the roads.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee has promised to in­ves­ti­gate the claims and for­ward res­i­dents’ con­cerns to the HDC chair­man. At­tempts by Guardian Me­dia to ob­tain a re­sponse from the HDC were un­suc­cess­ful.