Sto­ries by RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Days af­ter floods wreaked hav­oc in Wood­land, res­i­dents at­tempt­ed to re­pair breach­es in the New Cut Chan­nel yes­ter­day on­ly to dis­cov­er that they were much deep­er than ex­pect­ed, cre­at­ing par­al­lel rivers with­in the la­goons.

More than 500 acres of pas­tures were in­un­dat­ed when the New Cut Chan­nel broke its banks in four places, flood­ing homes, top­pling gates, walls and fences, drown­ing an­i­mals, de­stroy­ing crops and caus­ing a stench through­out the com­mu­ni­ty. In an at­tempt to pre­vent a re­cur­rence, more than 35 res­i­dents gath­ered at the Su­dama Teerath site to re­pair the breach­es. Armed with truck tires and 5,000 sand­bags, they em­barked on the task on­ly to be stopped by the enor­mi­ty of the dam­age caused by the floods.

Pres­i­dent of the South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion group, Ed­ward Mood­ie ex­plained: “This is worse than we re­al­ized and the wa­ter from the la­goon is now pour­ing back in­to the riv­er. This is a dis­as­ter wait­ing to hap­pen, and we need the Works Min­istry to come in now and work with us to fix this be­fore any fur­ther rains oc­cur.”

Mood­ie said the first breach, orig­i­nal­ly es­ti­mat­ed to be 30 feet wide and six feet high, turned out to be much deep­er as the force of the gush­ing riv­er wa­ter cut in­to the bank by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 14 feet.

Rec­og­niz­ing the ur­gent need for in­ter­ven­tion, he out­lined a re­pair plan.

“We are pack­ing 5,000 bags of soil to take up­riv­er. We are go­ing to lev­el the bank, put down the truck tires in a stag­gered fash­ion, an­chor them down, and then com­pact the dirt. We will then plant the ve­tiv­er grass, the roots of which go down over 12 feet. They should be plant­i­ng grass all along the riv­er bank to help sta­bi­lize the banks,” he said.

Mood­ie said as­sess­ments re­vealed sev­er­al more ar­eas along the riv­er bank that are crum­bling.

“We be­lieve an ad­di­tion­al 900 feet of the bank could soon wash away,” he said.

Mak­ing an ur­gent ap­peal to Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan, Mood­ie asked for clar­i­ty on plans to re­pair the riv­er bank.

“We need the riv­er banks to be for­ti­fied prop­er­ly and we need re­ten­tion dams as far as Moru­ga,” he said, not­ing that ten ar­eas have been iden­ti­fied where dams can be built.

Kr­ish­na Per­sads­ingh, a for­mer coun­cil­lor who has a Mas­ter’s de­gree in en­vi­ron­men­tal sci­ence from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), rec­om­mend­ed that qual­i­fied en­vi­ron­men­tal sci­en­tists and en­gi­neers be used a com­pre­hen­sive drainage pol­i­cy for the Oropouche Drainage Basin.

“The gov­ern­ment must de­vel­op and im­ple­ment a cli­mate change pol­i­cy,” he said, em­pha­siz­ing that the flood­ing is a con­se­quence of cli­mate change and re­quires ad­dress­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al chal­lenges.

Dur­ing the riv­er bank for­ti­fi­ca­tion ef­forts, Naz­im Mo­hammed, di­rec­tor of South­ern Food Bas­ket, ar­rived with a truck­load of sup­plies for the res­i­dents. Rec­og­niz­ing the hard­ships faced by the com­mu­ni­ty, Mo­hammed said sup­pli­ers came to­geth­er and do­nat­ed san­i­ta­tion sup­plies and gro­ceries to help res­i­dents cope with their dif­fi­cul­ties.

Work to for­ti­fy the riv­er banks will con­tin­ue at the Su­dama Teerath site to­day. Any­one in­ter­est­ed in as­sist­ing can con­tact the pres­i­dent of the Wood­land Flood Ac­tion Group Adesh Singh at 334-5608, or Mood­ie at 349-8548.