Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Works along the Ca­roni Riv­er are be­ing pri­ori­tised due to in­creas­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns, par­tic­u­lar­ly the threat of con­tin­u­ous flood­ing and the build-up of pol­lu­tion.

This was the word from Ch­agua­nas West MP Neil Go­sine in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a ham­per dis­tri­b­u­tion ex­er­cise at his Munroe Road con­stituen­cy of­fice on Sat­ur­day.

Go­sine high­light­ed that com­mu­ni­ties such as Ibis Gar­dens and Ca­roni Vil­lage, lo­cat­ed in close prox­im­i­ty to the riv­er, have ex­pe­ri­enced re­peat­ed flood­ing over the years and up to re­cent­ly fol­low­ing the pass­ing of an ad­verse weath­er pat­tern. He said the flood­ing was ex­ac­er­bat­ed due to blocked wa­ter­cours­es.

While the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture is set to un­der­take tem­po­rary works, Go­sine said long-term in­ter­ven­tions on the river­banks are be­ing planned, with an em­pha­sis on clear­ing wa­ter­cours­es and ad­dress­ing pol­lu­tion.

How­ev­er, Go­sine is­sued a strong ap­peal to res­i­dents, urg­ing them to be re­spon­si­ble with waste dis­pos­al.

“We just have to do bet­ter and be con­scious of the pol­lu­tion, es­pe­cial­ly the plas­tics. When we do bring in the back­hoes to clear the drainage, there is a tonne of plas­tics that we get. That is some­thing that we have to look at, so please, I am ask­ing the peo­ple to be more care­ful be­cause we cause dam­age to our­selves and our own homes.”

He not­ed that plas­tic waste has be­come a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to flood­ing, es­pe­cial­ly when it clogs crit­i­cal drains and wa­ter routes.

Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed al­so raised con­cerns about the vol­ume of waste re­moved from drainage sys­tems. He re­vealed that the bor­ough’s un­der­ground main­te­nance teams re­cent­ly cleared ap­prox­i­mate­ly 600 to 800 pounds of de­bris from a key un­der­ground drainage sys­tem along the Ch­agua­nas Main Road. The dom­i­nant ma­te­r­i­al they col­lect­ed were plas­tic bot­tles.

Mo­hammed said, “These drains are cleaned week­ly and im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing any pe­ri­ods of heavy rain­fall. Lit­ter­ing di­rect­ly con­tributes to flood­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it in­volves un­der­ground drains. These sys­tems are de­signed to chan­nel wa­ter ef­fi­cient­ly, but when blocked by garbage, es­pe­cial­ly non-biodegrad­able plas­tics, they re­strict the wa­ter­course and cause back­ups and flood­ing.”

De­spite on­go­ing chal­lenges, Mo­hammed af­firmed that the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion (CBC) has tak­en proac­tive steps. He said two ma­jor cul­vert cross­ings were re­cent­ly re­placed.

“These old­er struc­tures were too nar­row to han­dle in­creased wa­ter vol­umes. Since up­grad­ing them, we have seen a no­table re­duc­tion in road­way flood­ing in those zones.”

He said the CBC con­tin­ues to work close­ly with the Min­istry of Works to im­ple­ment fur­ther drainage up­grades along the Ch­agua­nas Main Road and oth­er ar­eas across the town cen­tre, with pol­lu­tion con­trol now seen as an in­te­gral part of flood mit­i­ga­tion strat­e­gy.