Mar­tine Pow­ers

For two re­searchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, the dis­as­ter that struck the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road last month was hard­ly sur­pris­ing.Sci­en­tists Denyse Ma­habir and Dr Leonard Nurse con­duct­ed an ex­ten­sive study of coastal ero­sion and pro­ject­ed sea lev­el rise in Man­zanil­la and reached some scary con­clu­sions which they pub­lished in a re­port in 2007.

"The rapid rate of ero­sion...has se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for the very ex­is­tence of the road," they wrote in the re­port. "At the cur­rent rate of ero­sion, the road may cease to ex­ist in 2-3 years, if no in­ter­ven­tion is made."

Last month, their dire pre­dic­tions came true: Ma­jor sec­tions of the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road crum­bled af­ter days of heavy rain and flood­ing, ren­der­ing the road im­pass­able. Now, gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials are work­ing to re­open the road as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, but they're al­so fac­ing a much more for­mi­da­ble task: How will they build a road that's flood-proof for years to come?

De­sign plans pre­pared by the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture (MOWI) in­di­cate that of­fi­cials are back­ing off from more am­bi­tious ideas and cost­ly strate­gies for re­build­ing, such as el­e­vat­ing the road­way or mov­ing it fur­ther away from the coast­line. nstead, they're fo­cus­ing on re­build­ing the road with deep drains, in­stalling wide cul­verts that will fun­nel swamp wa­ter out to the ocean, and us­ing gi­ant, mat­tress-sized bas­kets of rock to pre­vent fur­ther ero­sion along the coast­line.

It's part of an at­tempt to strike a bal­ance–the need to pro­vide a quick fix with as­pi­ra­tions of in­vest­ing in a more thought­ful long-term so­lu­tion for the road.

"We could be build­ing a tem­po­rary road with the same prob­lems, and next year, please God, we catch a high tide and the road wash in again," said Shawn Charles, a 30-year-old Ma­yaro res­i­dent who at­tend­ed a Thurs­day meet­ing on the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road. "Are we look­ing at the re­al is­sues with stop­ping what­ev­er it is that caused the huge in­flux of wa­ter to come to­wards the road­way? Or are we just de­cid­ing that we're go­ing to by­pass that and build our road any­way?"

Ex­pert: Pause and con­sid­er

Weigh­ing the de­mand for speedy re­pairs against the need for long-term so­lu­tions is a chal­lenge that cities all over the world are fac­ing as they deal with flood­ing caused by ris­ing sea lev­els and chang­ing weath­er pat­terns, said Lar­ry Buss, of The As­so­ci­a­tion of State Flood­plain Man­agers, a US or­gan­i­sa­tion that fo­cus­es on flood pre­pared­ness and re­cov­ery.

Buss said that en­gi­neers who try to re­build flood­ed roads ex­act­ly as they were be­fore are mak­ing a huge mis­take: coastal floods will on­ly be­come more fre­quent in com­ing years.

"Politi­cians, ad­min­is­tra­tors, lo­cal peo­ple, res­i­dents–they want the road back as soon as pos­si­ble," Buss said. "The prob­lem with do­ing that is they're spend­ing mon­ey right now, and go­ing to have to spend the same mon­ey again."Buss said that gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials should use dam­aged roads as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pause and con­sid­er in­vest­ing in new, in­no­v­a­tive de­signs that of­fer a chance of with­stand­ing heavy flood­ing in the fu­ture.

"A dis­as­ter is on­ly a dis­as­ter if you re­build ex­act­ly the way it was be­fore," Buss said. "Some­thing like this al­ways cre­ates op­por­tu­ni­ties for you to do some­thing bet­ter." But, he added, "most peo­ple don't see it that way."

The long-term fu­ture of the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road is an is­sue that has con­cerned res­i­dents, too. At a Thurs­day meet­ing with Ma­yaro res­i­dents in the town's civic cen­tre, lo­cals clam­oured for de­tails on the long-term fu­ture of the road­way, and how en­gi­neer­ing of­fi­cials in­tend­ed to pre­vent the road from in­cur­ring sim­i­lar dam­age af­ter fu­ture rain­storms. Some won­dered whether there was a pos­si­bil­i­ty of el­e­vat­ing the road­way sev­er­al feet off the ground.

"Our biggest con­cern is not to let it hap­pen again," said Ma­yaro res­i­dent Im­ran Jan.

But when res­i­dents asked for de­tails on the re­build­ing plan, they re­ceived few an­swers: They learned that there were no MOWI en­gi­neers present at the meet­ing to ex­plain the plan. MP Win­ston Pe­ters of Ma­yaro and MOWI En­vi­ron­men­tal Health Di­rec­tor Doolar Ram­lal said the agency de­cid­ed not to show res­i­dents the slideshow pre­sen­ta­tion of the con­struc­tion plan for road re­pairs be­cause it had been deemed too "tech­ni­cal" for res­i­dents to un­der­stand.

Pe­ters be­rat­ed res­i­dents for ar­riv­ing at the meet­ing with too many com­plaints and too few help­ful sug­ges­tions about what could be done to help re­build the road in the short-term. Long-term in­vest­ments to widen or el­e­vate the road are not pru­dent, he added, be­cause of the gov­ern­ment's plans to even­tu­al­ly build a high­way from Va­len­cia to Ma­yaro that would di­vert much of the traf­fic from the coastal roads.

At times, the meet­ing erupt­ed in­to shout­ing match­es be­tween Pe­ters and frus­trat­ed res­i­dents stand­ing at the mic who asked for clear an­swers on the an­tic­i­pat­ed time­line of re­pairs."I want to say to you, how much faster you want them to build the road?" Pe­ters asked. "In this case, 'abra­cadabra' would not have worked...The Gov­ern­ment did this in the quick­est pos­si­ble time that it could have been done.""You say­ing two weeks?" the res­i­dent at the mic asked.

"I'm say­ing it's go­ing to be done in the quick­est pos­si­ble time."

Long-term plans for the road­way

But there is some in­di­ca­tion of how MOWI en­gi­neers in­tend to im­prove the road­way in the long-term. The pre­sen­ta­tion pre­pared by the agency on the ten­ta­tive de­sign plans for the re­build­ing process sug­gest that their plans are less am­bi­tious–and less ex­pen­sive–than re-rout­ing or el­e­vat­ing the road. In­stead, they plan to im­prove drainage and use in­no­v­a­tive tech­niques to pre­vent fur­ther ero­sion.

En­gi­neers will fo­cus on sev­en or eight "breach­es"–nat­ur­al wa­ter­ways gouged out by last month's tor­ren­tial rain­wa­ter–that fun­nel wa­ter from the road out in­to the ocean. In­stead of fill­ing these breach­es, the MOWI pre­sen­ta­tion said, of­fi­cials plan to main­tain them, pro­vid­ing the swampy wa­ter from the west­ern side of the road an es­cape route to pre­vent the road from be­com­ing wa­ter­logged.

Con­struc­tion work­ers will al­so line those drainage chan­nels with "ma­rine mat­tress­es"–large mats of grid­ded syn­thet­ic ma­te­r­i­al that are stuffed with rocks, about the size and shape of a large bed­room mat­tress. These mat­tress­es will be laid on­to the banks of the wa­ter­ways to pre­vent more of the sandy beach from wash­ing away in fu­ture storms.

The new ver­sion of the road will al­so fea­ture deep drains on ei­ther side, a fea­ture that was sore­ly lack­ing be­fore last month's storm. There will be a pipe run­ning un­der­neath the road with a valve that will al­low flood­wa­ter from the swamp to es­cape out in­to the ocean, but will pre­vent salty ocean wa­ter from push­ing back un­der­neath the road and con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the wet­land on the west side of the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road.

Ac­cord­ing to the MOWI re­port, the first phase of that con­struc­tion is set to last two months and cost $57 mil­lion to com­plete.Con­trac­tors work­ing on the flood-dam­aged road have been giv­en a Christ­mas dead­line to re­store the link be­tween the two com­mu­ni­ties to al­low for light to medi­um traf­fic. The road-re­pair project, which be­gan on Mon­day, in­cludes ac­quir­ing two to three prop­er­ties along the Man­zanil­la stretch to put prop­er drainage and road in­fra­struc­ture in place.