SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) has launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the par­tial col­lapse of the South Trunk Road which cost tax­pay­ers $280 mil­lion.

EMA’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Hay­den Ro­mano con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day dur­ing a brief tele­phone in­ter­view that the au­thor­i­ty is cur­rent­ly prob­ing the mat­ter, fol­low­ing which a re­port will be sub­mit­ted to the au­thor­i­ty lat­er this week.

Ro­mano said from the day the project start­ed the EMA has been mon­i­tor­ing its work on a month­ly ba­sis.

“As far as I am aware, there has not been any breach­es of an en­vi­ron­men­tal re­quire­ment. How­ev­er, we are go­ing to be look­ing at the CEC (Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance) in de­tail. We will do our in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion, he said, was on­go­ing.

“I am hop­ing that it will be com­plet­ed be­fore the end of the week. As far as I know, we would have been on-site al­ready for the (this) month.”

Ro­mano said through­out the project the EMA would have mon­i­tored the sit­u­a­tion via a par­tic­u­lar de­part­ment.

“We had a par­tic­u­lar de­part­ment that mon­i­tored the project and we have not had any in­di­ca­tion that there had been any en­vi­ron­men­tal breach­es. Re­mem­ber the EMA is con­cerned with the en­vi­ron­ment.”

Asked if en­vi­ron­men­tal breach­es are found, Ro­mano said, the EMA will have “to bring them in­to com­pli­ance.”

Ro­mano iden­ti­fied the Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) num­ber for the project as 2824 of 2010.

A sum­ma­ry of the CEC on the EMA’s web­site showed the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port ap­plied for the CEC on April 1, 2010 “to up­grade and de­vel­op­ment of the South­ern Main Road, Paria Suites to St Mary’s Junc­tion.”

The CEC was is­sued to the min­istry by the EMA on April 29, 2011.

Ro­mano said the min­istry would have sub­mit­ted sev­er­al sup­port­ing doc­u­ments to the EMA to ob­tain the CEC. Among those doc­u­ments were its de­signs and scope of works.

“We have to make sure that they are in com­pli­ance with what they said they were go­ing to do.”

Last week­end, cracks formed along the road­way.

As the days passed it got worse, re­sult­ing in an ex­panse of 180 me­tres of the paved road­way col­laps­ing in­to the sea along with parts of the revet­ment sea­wall.

At a press con­fer­ence on Sun­day, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress called on the EMA to in­ter­vene and in­ves­ti­gate whether the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny abid­ed by the rec­om­men­da­tions out­lined in the CEC that was grant­ed for the con­struc­tion of the road­works at Mos­qui­to Creek.

The As­so­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sion­al En­gi­neers of T&T al­so asked the min­istry to do a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the par­tial col­lapse at the La Ro­maine site which is un­der con­struc­tion as part of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way to Point Fortin.

An ar­ti­cle in yes­ter­day’s Trinidad Guardian quot­ed Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan as say­ing that a re­port on the col­lapsed road­way is due this week.

Works are on­go­ing on the site.

Jusam­co Pavers, al­so known as Ju­nior Sam­my Con­trac­tors, won the con­tract to up­grade 2.4 kilo­me­tres of the north­bound and south­bound car­riage­way with a re­vised fi­nal bid of $280, 976, 489.08 VAT in­clu­sive.

Once the re­port reach­es the EMA, Ro­mano as­sured the me­dia will be in­formed of its find­ings.

“The me­dia was the one who alert­ed us to the con­cerns and we re­spect every­body’s con­cerns.”

Ro­mano said the EMA will not shun its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.