Weeks af­ter the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port re­built a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the bank along the New Cut Chan­nel, it col­lapsed again, leav­ing res­i­dents wor­ried that heavy rain­fall could erode the struc­ture.

Breach­es in the riv­er bank have been the source of anger and dev­as­ta­tion for many Wood­land res­i­dents in re­cent years, caus­ing se­vere flood­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty. The New Cut Chan­nel takes wa­ter from the Oropouche Riv­er and oth­er main wa­ter­ways from as far as Princes Town and Moru­ga to the Godineau Riv­er and in­to the Gulf of Paria at Mos­qui­to Creek.

Fed up with wait­ing for the min­istry, res­i­dents be­gan re­pair­ing the bank with sand­bags and a boom made from tyres last month. De­spite a call from the min­istry to stop as it await­ed the com­ple­tion of its ten­der­ing process, the res­i­dents con­tin­ued. Last month, a con­trac­tor com­plet­ed the work, but when the South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion Group checked on it this week­end, they dis­cov­ered cracks in the bank.

Group pres­i­dent Ed­ward Mood­ie called on Oropouche West MP Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo to high­light the sit­u­a­tion in the Par­lia­ment. 

“We want this ad­dressed at the high­est lev­el, and we are say­ing to the en­gi­neers in the Drainage Di­vi­sion that you all wast­ed mil­lions of dol­lars here. There are cracks more than two to 300 feet long,” Mood­ie said.

Mood­ie said this was not the first time the min­istry had worked on the banks, but there were re­peat­ed fail­ures. He said the res­i­dents ex­pect­ed the re­cent work to fail as they warned the min­istry that the method used was like­ly to col­lapse. He ex­plained that the marsh­lands de­vel­oped many air pock­ets be­cause of the harsh dry sea­son. The banks the min­istry built be­gan sink­ing in­to the air pock­ets when the rains came. He al­so said the slope in­to the riv­er was too steep.
Mood­ie rec­om­mend­ed the min­istry dig a trench along­side the riv­er and re­place the sand with a sol­id ma­te­r­i­al, sim­i­lar to the work done at Mos­qui­to Creek. He said a fea­si­ble en­gi­neer­ing prac­tice was adding veg­e­ta­tion to bind the soil.

“Even corn grass is free. In a few weeks, the roots are go­ing to hold. They will dry down even­tu­al­ly, but the roots are what you need to hold the banks. Why not bam­boo? Even the dung tree. Dungs are very ef­fec­tive at hold­ing soil. We have so many plants that we can use,” urged Mood­ie.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan for a re­sponse, but there was no an­swer.