Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

It could take up to ten years to re­solve the per­sis­tent flood­ing af­fect­ing res­i­dents of the South Oropouche Basin, ac­cord­ing to a com­mu­ni­ty en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist.

Sus­tain­able Cli­mate Re­sis­tance Ini­tia­tive chair­man Ed­ward Mood­ie made the com­ment at the launch of a five-week Com­mu­ni­ty Emer­gency Re­sponse Team (CERT) course host­ed at the Bar­rack­pore Dawah Foun­da­tion at Rochard Dou­glas Road.

Mood­ie said his or­gan­i­sa­tion has spent the past nine years study­ing the basin’s hy­dro­log­i­cal sys­tem and has iden­ti­fied the root caus­es of the flood­ing. A pro­fes­sion­al re­port out­lin­ing these find­ings has since been sub­mit­ted to Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters.

Mood­ie high­light­ed the spe­cif­ic chal­lenges faced by the com­mu­ni­ty, not­ing that “Bar­rack­pore has a unique sit­u­a­tion that would re­quire the con­struc­tion of sev­er­al re­ten­tion dams.” He re­vealed that in 2023, the or­gan­i­sa­tion par­tic­i­pat­ed in an ini­tia­tive aimed at se­cur­ing a US$10 mil­lion grant from the De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (CAF).

To ef­fec­tive­ly man­age the ex­cess wa­ter, Mood­ie said at least ten 100-acre dams would need to be con­struct­ed. “My or­gan­i­sa­tion has iden­ti­fied 20 ar­eas in south Trinidad where re­ten­tion dams would be placed,” he added.

The first of these dams is planned for con­struc­tion at Ha­gard Trace, lo­cat­ed be­tween Mo­r­ouga and Rock Road.

Mood­ie said sig­nif­i­cant hy­dro­log­i­cal work must be car­ried out be­fore the build­ing stage be­gins in 2026.

The Min­istry of Plan­ning is over­see­ing the fund­ing, while im­ple­men­ta­tion is be­ing man­aged by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI).

Mood­ie al­so com­ment­ed on the pur­pose of the CERT course, stat­ing, “The course was geared to­wards prepar­ing com­mu­ni­ties for a dis­as­ter.”

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns over re­cent land move­ment in Los Iros, Mood­ie not­ed that he has three ge­ol­o­gists work­ing on sub-sur­face analy­sis in the area.

“What we found is not good,” he said, adding that he plans to present a re­port to the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture.

Mean­while, Bar­rack­pore Dawah Foun­da­tion chair­man Menan De­osaran un­der­scored the im­pact of flood­ing on lo­cal res­i­dents, par­tic­u­lar­ly live­stock farm­ers.

“Res­i­dents of the area suf­fer im­mense loss­es when flood­ing oc­curs, es­pe­cial­ly to live­stock,” he said. De­osaran added that the pro­gramme would al­so “iden­ti­fy the com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers who can come for­ward to as­sist peo­ple dur­ing a dis­as­ter.