Kalain Ho­sein

Min­utes of rain in the cap­i­tal city leads to flood­ing, and it is a fact of life for those that live, work or tra­verse Port-of-Spain at any giv­en point in the year. Flood­ing in the na­tion’s cap­i­tal is al­so not a nov­el is­sue and dates to the city’s in­cep­tion.

In 1796, Port-of-Spain was named un­der British rule. From 1802, the city un­der­went sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment that main­ly de­fined the cap­i­tal as we know it. Port-of-Spain’s bound­aries at the turn of the 19th cen­tu­ry were set by the St Ann’s Riv­er (al­so known as the East Dry Riv­er) to the east and, at the time, Rich­mond Street to the west, Park Street to the north, and the Gulf of Paria to the south. By 1899, it was ex­tend­ed to in­clude Bel­mont, the East Dry Riv­er, and Wood­brook, where the Mar­aval Riv­er acts at the west­ern bound­ary.

By 1914, Port-of-Spain was de­clared a city, and ad­di­tion­al ar­eas be­gan to be in­clud­ed with­in its bounds like St Clair by 1917. How­ev­er, on June 27, the in­fa­mous 1933 Trinidad Hur­ri­cane made land­fall on ex­treme south­west­ern Trinidad as a cat­e­go­ry one hur­ri­cane. This pow­er­ful storm caused 13 fa­tal­i­ties and over US$60 mil­lion in dam­age (2021 dol­lars, ad­just­ed for in­fla­tion) in dam­age. For the first time in record­ed his­to­ry, the East Dry Riv­er burst its banks dur­ing this hur­ri­cane, flood­ing Port-of-Spain.

In 1934, the East Dry Riv­er was paved, for­ev­er chang­ing the riv­er’s hy­drol­o­gy and in­tro­duc­ing a new cor­ri­dor from north­ern to south­ern Port-of-Spain. Be­tween 1937 and 1938, land was re­claimed from the Gulf of Paria to de­vel­op west­ern ar­eas of Port-of-Spain. Over the next 60 years, the city was con­tin­u­al­ly de­vel­oped, but the drainage re­mained large­ly un­touched.

Im­pact­ful and se­vere flood­ing con­tin­ued in the cap­i­tal. In 1967, in­tense rains led to ma­jor flood­ing that swept away homes in Port-of-Spain, ren­der­ing 11 peo­ple home­less. In 1993, an­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant flood event took the lives of five peo­ple, left eight home­less, and caused ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$70,000 in dam­age.

In 2008, Port-of-Spain ex­pe­ri­enced some of its worst flood­ing in decades, oc­cur­ring in Sep­tem­ber, No­vem­ber, and De­cem­ber, caus­ing one fa­tal­i­ty.

In the past five years, of­fi­cials have had to res­cue or re­cov­er those who un­for­tu­nate­ly en­coun­tered the East Dry Riv­er’s rage, with at least four deaths record­ed since 2016 with two peo­ple be­ing saved.

Ori­gin of the flood­wa­ter

Both the East Dry/St Ann’s Riv­er and the Mar­aval Riv­er be­gin in the north­west­ern moun­tains of the North­ern Range and flow south­ward in­to the Gulf of Paria.

Wa­ter from the hills of St Ann’s, Cas­cade, Bel­mont, and East Port of Spain all fil­ter in­to the East Dry Riv­er, in­clud­ing drainage from down­town Port-of-Spain it­self. The Mar­aval Riv­er has a sub­stan­tial­ly larg­er catch­ment area, ex­tend­ing in­to the up­per Mar­aval Val­ley and in­clud­ing Dibe, St Clair, St James, Mu­cu­rapo, and Wood­brook in west Port-of-Spain.

The caus­es of flood­ing in Port-of-Spain are mul­ti-faceted. Port-of-Spain was de­vel­oped in the flood plains of both the East Dry Riv­er and the Mar­aval Riv­er. As its name sug­gests, a flood plain is an area that nat­u­ral­ly would flood if rivers ex­ceed­ed their ca­pac­i­ty. The Ca­roni Plains are an­oth­er ex­am­ple of this in Trinidad.

The cap­i­tal is al­so lo­cat­ed at sea lev­el. If heavy rain­fall oc­curs in tan­dem with a high tide, wa­ter­cours­es quick­ly reach ca­pac­i­ty, and there is nowhere for the wa­ter to go but up.

The type of rain­fall that af­fects north­west­ern Trinidad al­so has its

part to play. Across T&T, con­vec­tion­al pre­cip­i­ta­tion oc­curs when warm air ris­es, lead­ing to cloud for­ma­tion and, even­tu­al­ly, rain­fall. Along west­ern Trinidad, in­clud­ing Port-of-Spain, sea breeze or west­er­ly con­ver­gence brings moist air from the Gulf of Paria on­to west­ern coastal Trinidad, which is then heat­ed by the land. Gen­er­al­ly, in Port-of-Spain and north­west­ern Trinidad, a high acreage of paved sur­faces al­lows for stronger heat­ing. When stronger heat­ing oc­curs, the air close to the ground heats up rapid­ly and ris­es, with cool­er air from the Gulf of Paria rush­ing in to take its place. This cy­cle con­tin­ues, re­sult­ing in heavy show­ers and thun­der­storms de­vel­op­ing, dump­ing large amounts of pre­cip­i­ta­tion in lo­cal­ized ar­eas. In a warmer and chang­ing cli­mate, ex­treme rain­fall events as­so­ci­at­ed with con­vec­tion-dri­ven process­es are pro­ject­ed to be­come in­creas­ing­ly fre­quent.

For near­ly 100 years, drainage with­in the city and in these ma­jor rivers has been left un­no­ticed. Sub­stan­tial de­vel­op­ment has lim­it­ed the ground’s per­me­abil­i­ty, re­mov­ing na­ture’s abil­i­ty to ab­sorb any rain­fall and con­vert­ing it in­to runoff.

Com­pound­ing the runoff ex­cess, Port-of-Spain is at sea lev­el. When wa­ter even­tu­al­ly makes its way to low­er Port-of-Spain dur­ing a high tide event, there is nowhere to go as drains or rivers may al­ready be filled with sea­wa­ter. There was, and still is, for the most part, no gate sys­tem to al­low the flow of wa­ter out of the city.

For the ex­ist­ing drains, the de­vel­op­ment of build­ings and util­i­ties has com­pro­mised crit­i­cal cul­verts across the city. The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT) has point­ed to a crit­i­cal drain un­der the PTSC build­ing at Hen­ry Street and util­i­ties such as WASA and NGC as some caus­es.

Fi­nal­ly, there is the is­sue of lit­ter­ing. Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez ex­plained lit­ter­ing isn’t just lim­it­ed to plas­tic bot­tles.

“You have res­i­dents or cit­i­zens that uti­lize and live close to the riv­er that through sol­id waste in­to the rivers. When they cut down a tree, they throw the whole tree in­to the riv­er, or they would through a wash­ing ma­chine or a dry­er or an old stove or some­thing like that,” he said.

Still, plas­tic pol­lu­tion re­mains the most sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to lit­ter in the cap­i­tal city.

May­or Mar­tinez added: “You have those peo­ple who uti­lize plas­tic bot­tles, and when they’re fin­ished with the bot­tles, they throw it in­to the canal, and then the rains come and then car­ry the bot­tles in­to the un­der­ground drain. That goes in­to the wa­ter­cours­es, and that’s when you see the ca­pac­i­ty of the drain now be­ing fur­ther over­loaded by a re­sult of ob­sta­cles.”

Mar­tinez al­so lament­ed that the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion can’t clean the drains as fast as the peo­ple who dirty them.

“The city is be­ing used every day by peo­ple, and it is a tran­sient pop­u­la­tion. They do not live in the city, and when they do live in the city, they don’t care too much about what hap­pens. They’re gone.”

A city with­out mon­ey

From the in­cep­tion of Joel Mar­tinez’s tenure as may­or, he rec­og­nized the is­sue and want­ed to face the prob­lem head-on.

He ex­plained: “I met with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), and they took me to var­i­ous parts of the world to see what drainage would look like in oth­er coun­tries, how you part wa­ter aside, and how you en­hance your in­fra­struc­ture.”

Mar­tinez al­so ex­plained that loans were made avail­able, and over the years, be­fore his tenure, sev­er­al stud­ies were done, and plans were drawn up, but none were ever ex­e­cut­ed. As this oc­curred be­fore his tenure, he couldn’t ex­plain why. In the same Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee re­port, a Flood Al­le­vi­a­tion and Drainage Pro­gramme was cre­at­ed to un­der­take drainage works in var­i­ous catch­ments in the city of Port-of-Spain. The re­port not­ed that “loan fund­ing for this pro­gramme was in­tend­ed to be sourced from the IDB. How­ev­er, this did not ma­te­ri­al­ize. There­fore, $2 mil­lion from the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion was trans­ferred to pay out­stand­ing bills un­der an­oth­er pro­gramme.”

As the pan­dem­ic hit, fund­ing sources dried up, un­like flood­ing in the city, and now, flood mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures were shift­ed to the city’s sec­ondary list of pri­or­i­ties.

The city has cho­sen, in the in­ter­im, to ramp up main­te­nance of the cap­i­tal’s drainage and en­sure when wa­ter hits the ground, it can flow as freely as pos­si­ble.

The may­or said plain­ly: “What we’ve been try­ing to do as a city since we have no mon­ey is to keep the drains con­stant­ly clean, so main­te­nance is fore­most in our minds.”

In a com­pre­hen­sive look at flood­ing across the coun­try, a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Land and Phys­i­cal In­fra­struc­ture re­port pub­lished in 2020, the MOWT con­cep­tu­al­ized and im­ple­ment­ed some flood mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures pre-pan­dem­ic.

In tack­ling the lit­ter­ing is­sue, the MOWT and the City Cor­po­ra­tion have cleared mul­ti­ple cul­verts across the city and in­stalled grills to keep the chan­nels clean. Both or­ga­ni­za­tions, pre-pan­dem­ic, worked every morn­ing to mon­i­tor the in­stalled grills. The Min­istry al­so in­stalled ad­di­tion­al cul­verts in front of PTSC, a small de­ten­tion pond, a pump gate, and a flap gate un­der the PURE pro­gramme.

They al­so com­plet­ed two of Port-of-Spain’s eight planned catch­ment ar­eas, with two more catch­ment ar­eas planned to be de­vel­oped in South Quay and near Hy­att. These catch­ment ar­eas will al­low the slow­ing of wa­ter in­to wa­ter­cours­es and al­le­vi­ate flood­ing.

The MOWT en­gaged the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency to close off a cove sec­tion near the Port-of-Spain Light­house. This would al­low flood­wa­ters to run in­to that area and be pumped in­to the sea. It would al­so be used as a garbage col­lec­tion point to re­move the garbage and pre­vent it from en­ter­ing the sea.

The largest and most im­pact­ful project was the con­struc­tion and in­stal­la­tion of a gate and pump sys­tem at Broad­way, near the Port-of-Spain Light­house, at the cost of $5 mil­lion. This sys­tem was able to pump wa­ter out of the city dur­ing rain­fall events, but it was able to pre­vent tidal wa­ter from en­ter­ing Port-of-Spain. This was part of a larg­er ini­tia­tive to in­stall sim­i­lar sys­tems at all sev­en cul­verts that emp­ty in­to the Gulf of Paria. Ac­cord­ing to the MOWT, these sys­tems re­duced the fre­quen­cy and du­ra­tion of floods in the cap­i­tal, with flood­wa­ters re­ced­ing af­ter an hour.

How­ev­er, the suc­cess of this flood pump was short-lived. On Oc­to­ber 22, thieves struck.

“Pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­di­cat­ed that elec­tri­cal ca­bles and three 15KVA trans­form­ers were stripped en­tire­ly of their core. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, four bat­ter­ies and the au­to­mat­ic charg­ing sys­tem used to sup­port the two main pumps at Sea Lots al­so were stolen,” the Min­istry con­firmed in an of­fi­cial state­ment.

While two peo­ple were tak­en in­to cus­tody, the in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­mained open.

May­or Mar­tinez ex­as­per­at­ed­ly ex­plained: “Here you have where we worked, and we’ve spent mon­ey, a cou­ple of mil­lion dol­lars well, to put these pumps in place to al­le­vi­ate flood­ing. Then what hap­pens is some­body van­dal­izes it who doesn’t care about the de­vel­op­ment of the city be­cause they want to ad­dress their re­lief.”

Ill-fat­ed ear­ly warn­ing sys­tem

It is hard to miss the aqua tow­er with “Flood Alert” on its side as you dri­ve in­to Port-of-Spain along In­de­pen­dence Square. How­ev­er, this sys­tem, since it was in­stalled. has nev­er worked.

Ac­cord­ing to the may­or: “We pur­chased an ear­ly warn­ing sys­tem and from what I un­der­stand, af­ter pur­chas­ing it, which was on the ad­vice of the City En­gi­neer, we nev­er heard any re­ports as to how, whether it is work­ing, whether it is not work­ing, whether it need­ed some form of tech­nol­o­gy or what­ev­er it is. It ap­pears they pur­chased the item, but they didn’t. I can’t give you any in­for­ma­tion on what hap­pened there­after be­cause it has not been forth­com­ing.”

The Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion has part­nered with Habi­tat for Hu­man­i­ty to make the cap­i­tal a more re­silient city by 2030.

The may­or ex­plained: “Part of that is to look at the land­slip de­vel­op­ment, how roofs fall off, the drainage and all these dif­fer­ent things to be able to sus­tain an earth­quake or hur­ri­cane or a dif­fi­cult rain­fall event that some­times could af­fect us and cre­ate mas­sive flood­ing.”

Re­ten­tion ponds would al­so be ide­al, as they would be able to slow the wa­ter en­ter­ing the city’s lim­it­ed drainage net­work, but it re­quires sub­stan­tial in­vest­ment.

“In the mean­time, all we can do is en­sure the drains are cleared, and we have our teams on stand­by. We en­cour­age cit­i­zens not to throw sol­id waste in­to the rivers and then hope for the best that it is not a high tide when we have a sys­tem that re­al­ly over­pow­ers the in­fra­struc­ture that we have,” the may­or added.

Lit­ter­ing, poor ur­ban plan­ning, and hill­side de­vel­op­ment, to name a few fac­tors, can ex­ac­er­bate runoff and block wa­ter­ways. How­ev­er, with tor­ren­tial rain­fall and a lim­it­ed-ca­pac­i­ty drainage net­work, very lit­tle can be done to pre­vent drains, streams, and rivers from be­ing over­whelmed.

Un­less sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal is ex­pend­ed to ad­dress the drainage ap­pro­pri­ate­ly and reg­u­lar main­te­nance of the na­tion’s wa­ter­cours­es are con­duct­ed, a spilt buck­et of wa­ter could still be enough to crip­ple a city and per­haps, take an­oth­er life.