KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

With trop­i­cal waves al­ready mov­ing across T&T, the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (MR­CRC) is us­ing man­u­al labour to clear wa­ter­cours­es, hop­ing to pre­vent se­vere flood­ing.

Chair­man of the cor­po­ra­tion Ray­mond Co­zi­er says it is some­thing work­ers have been do­ing for some time in the flood-prone re­gion in South-East Trinidad.

Clean­ing ma­jor wa­ter­cours­es is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port’s (MOWT) Drainage Di­vi­sion and Co­zi­er said he did not see the lev­el of clean­ing done in pre­vi­ous years in the past six months.

“It has start­ed. How­ev­er, all the cours­es that they would nor­mal­ly clean over the years: they were not able to ac­com­plish that this year. Speak­ing with the reps, they are say­ing that they are still wait­ing on re­leas­es or ap­provals to have all the ma­jor wa­ter­cours­es cleared,” Co­zi­er said.

In­ad­e­quate clean­ing of rivers was a com­plaint of oth­er re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions which sus­tain peren­ni­als floods.

The Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice’s Rain­fall and Tem­per­a­ture Out­look states that the 2022 wet sea­son is like­ly to be volatile and er­rat­ic, with wet­ter than usu­al con­di­tions. It says there may be an above-nor­mal num­ber of heavy and ex­treme­ly heavy rain­fall, with three-day and five-day wet spells ex­pect­ed. This in­creas­es the po­ten­tial for floods in known and emerg­ing flood-prone ar­eas.

Since May, the Met Ser­vice had urged cit­i­zens to ac­cel­er­ate prepa­ra­tions for the sea­son.

While he does not want to pre­dict if there will be floods this year, Co­zi­er said giv­en the past in­ci­dences in the re­gion, it was pos­si­ble the MR­CRC could have chal­lenges this rainy sea­son.

In com­mu­ni­ties of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SGRC), each coun­cil­lor was re­spon­si­ble for en­sur­ing the clear­ing of three main wa­ter­cours­es in their elec­toral dis­tricts dur­ing the dry sea­son.

SGRC chair­man Anil Juter­am said they have a mi­ni ex­ca­va­tor to aid in clean­ing some wa­ter­cours­es.

The cor­po­ra­tion al­so sent rec­om­men­da­tions to the MOWT to de-silt, widen and dredge the wa­ter­course in Ve­ga de Oropouche, the most flood-prone area in the re­gion.

Juter­am added that the SGRC will par­tic­i­pate in the Na­tion­al Cleanup Cam­paign un­der the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment in Ju­ly.

But he said the re­gion faces a big chal­lenge at the North Oropouche Riv­er, which flows in­to Fish­ing Pond be­fore reach­ing the sea.

Sand­banks at the riv­er mouth con­tin­u­ous­ly form, caus­ing the wa­ter lev­el in the riv­er to rise and over­spill its banks dur­ing heavy rain­fall. While the SGRC cleared the riv­er mouth, Juter­am said high tide and wa­ter from Tamana stress the riv­er’s ca­pac­i­ty. And then there is the hu­man as­pect.

“We have had a ma­jor set­back with ma­jor de­vel­op­ers. Un­scrupu­lous land de­vel­op­ers are build­ing in flood-prone ar­eas and have been di­vert­ing the wa­ter­cours­es, turn­ing wa­ter­cours­es in­to box drains, and even block­ing wa­ter­cours­es. Un­scrupu­lous land de­vel­op­ers across the board are the things that con­tribute to a re­al in­crease in flood­ing in our re­gion,” Juter­am said.

There were nine ma­jor flood­ing in­ci­dents in the Pe­nal/Debe re­gion since 2017 - six caused dam­age to homes and de­stroyed crops.

Pe­nal-Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (PDRC) chair­man Dr Allen Sam­my said there are over 1,000 homes af­fect­ed.

With 99 wa­ter­cours­es to main­tain, Sam­my said the PDRC pur­chased a mi­ni-ex­ca­va­tor and em­barked on an ag­gres­sive clean­ing pro­gramme. But with the amount of clean­ing re­quired, he said it was hard to keep up.

Even if there is a free flow in wa­ter­cours­es main­tained by the PDRC, those wa­ter­cours­es then flow in­to rivers un­der the care of MOWT, he not­ed.

Sam­my claimed the MOWT con­tin­ues to clear rivers in ar­eas near hous­es, ne­glect­ing the sec­tions fur­ther down­stream.

While that may in­crease the flow, he said block­ages fur­ther down the rivers will still cause floods in com­mu­ni­ties. He said the South Oropouche drainage basin falls with­in the re­gion where 40 per cent of the 90,000 burgess­es feel the di­rect im­pact of floods.

In prepa­ra­tion, the PDRC be­gan dis­trib­ut­ing sand­bags and en­gag­ing in pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion to help mit­i­gate flood dam­age.

With an ac­tive wet sea­son up­on the coun­try, how­ev­er, the PDRC is brac­ing for se­vere flood­ing.

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