SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Like many oth­er Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) projects, Ma­yaro’s Co­conut Grove De­vel­op­ment faces its share of woes, in­clud­ing com­plaints of con­stant flood­ing due to im­prop­er drainage.

Now home­own­ers live in fear that the de­vel­op­ment in which they live could turn in­to a dis­as­ter zone if ad­verse weath­er con­di­tions in­ten­si­fy.

The Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed the de­vel­op­ment ear­li­er this week, where res­i­dents were trapped in their homes for three days—Oc­to­ber 19, 20 and 21—when most ma­jor rivers in the coun­try burst their banks due to ex­ces­sive rain­fall.

But the res­i­dents in Co­conut Grove said the flood­ing was not on­ly caused by heavy rain­fall—when­ev­er the ocean tide is high, the Or­toire Riv­er, which bor­ders the de­vel­op­ment to the west, floods the drains. As a re­sult, the drains in and around the hous­es are filled to ca­pac­i­ty for most of the day. Rain­fall on­ly adds to the prob­lem and street flood­ing has be­come a reg­u­lar oc­cur­rence.

There are 58 hous­es in the de­vel­op­ment, which was start­ed in 2004 by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) un­der the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott). Six of the 58 units re­main va­cant up to this day.

Res­i­dent Sharon Rogers said she and her fam­i­ly were trapped as the wa­ter rose quick­ly and reached close to three feet high in her yard. The hous­es in which they live are built on short stilts, about three feet high, which meant that the wa­ter was close to en­ter­ing their homes. Fam­i­lies who did not want to brave the murky flood­wa­ters to get out were ma­rooned in their homes.

“We couldn’t come out in that wa­ter, it was very un­san­i­tary be­cause you could see peo­ple’s cesspit tank cov­ers float­ing, so there was raw sew­er­age in that wa­ter,” she said.

Rogers said this was the third time she has ex­pe­ri­enced ma­jor flood­ing in the last year. She has been liv­ing in the de­vel­op­ment for nine years.

“My son said it’s like we are liv­ing in a mud­dy lake. For about three days we couldn’t come out, the en­tire de­vel­op­ment was cov­ered in wa­ter be­cause the riv­er is just about 300 feet from the de­vel­op­ment so as soon as it flows, we get flood.”

She said it was the worst flood­ing that com­mu­ni­ty had ex­pe­ri­enced and it has brought on fears that Co­conut Grove can face a dis­as­ter just like Green­vale.

“It is cause for con­cern be­cause if the rain con­tin­ued to fall, we would have got­ten wa­ter in our homes.”

Two streets away, Sarah Ram­sey-John­son ex­pressed sim­i­lar fears.

“What is go­ing to hap­pen to us the day we get flood­ing like Green­vale? Every­one in this de­vel­op­ment will drown,” she said.

Ram­sey-John­son said ini­tial­ly she didn’t want a house in Co­conut Grove be­cause she knew it was built on re­claimed swamp land.

“I didn’t have a choice, I had wait­ed sev­en years for a call. When I got it and I came here, peo­ple told me to brace for flood, but some­one had told me if I gave back the house for any rea­son, I wouldn’t get an­oth­er, so I stuck it out,” she said.

She said the house cost her $240,000.

Ram­sey-John­son, who lives clos­er to the riv­er than Rogers, said the wa­ter in her yard rose much high­er.

“If it had come any high­er, it was com­ing in­side the house. I don’t know what I’ll do if we end up like Green­vale, I don’t think I can even af­ford to think about start­ing over.”

She said when she first moved in, she lost a wash­ing ma­chine and a wa­ter pump to flood­wa­ters.

“We didn’t take the warn­ing se­ri­ous­ly and we paid for it. Now, any­time a lit­tle rain falls, we put up our stuff on heights and don’t take it down for a few days.”

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Kha­dine George said she was afraid that snakes and oth­er rep­tiles would come in­to her home dur­ing the flood. George said the drainage in the area was not ad­e­quate and no one cleans the drains.

She al­so com­plained that flood­wa­ters set­tle un­der the hous­es, cre­at­ing a breed­ing ground for mos­qui­toes and sand­flies.

“Mos­qui­toes are one of our biggest prob­lems here, we have to bat­tle them every evening.”

Sev­er­al hous­es away, Dookhani Dook­ie, 71, who lives with her daugh­ter in the house clos­est to the riv­er, lament­ed that the flood­wa­ters were the high­est she had ever seen.

Dook­ie said the wa­ter reached the fourth step on the stair­case to en­ter the house.

“We couldn’t come out or do any­thing, we just had to stay in­side for the whole week­end,” she said.

The con­struc­tion seemed to have stopped at Dook­ie’s home, with sev­er­al lots next to her home va­cant.

One res­i­dent, who asked not to be named, blamed the con­stant flood­ing on a lack of prop­er plan­ning dur­ing the con­struc­tion.

“Once the tide comes up in the riv­er, the drains in Co­conut Grove are al­ways filled. I have nev­er seen those drains emp­ty. And when the drains are full and the slight­est rain falls, the wa­ter has nowhere to go but in our yards,” he said.

Con­tract moves from $11M to $19M

Con­trac­tor Alves Eas­t­eel was award­ed the con­tract at an orig­i­nal price of $11 mil­lion.

The project was sup­posed to be com­plet­ed by June 30, 2007. At a HDC board meet­ing un­der then chair­man An­dre Mon­teil on Jan­u­ary 26, 2007, the cor­po­ra­tion took over the Co­conut Grove Project. At that time, it was not­ed that the ex­pect­ed cost of the com­plet­ed project by Ude­cott was over $12 mil­lion af­ter $700,000 was paid for project man­age­ment con­sul­tant fees to ML & As­so­ciates.

It was al­so not­ed that the Co­conut Grove project, along with the Bev­er­ly Hills, Laven­tille project, the La­dy Young Road, Mor­vant project, the Mendez Dri­ve, Champs Fleurs project, the A Riv­er Runs Through It, Ari­ma project, and the Roy Joseph Street, San Fer­nan­do project had en­coun­tered de­lays and in­creased costs.

At that meet­ing, a de­ci­sion was tak­en to in­struct con­trac­tors to “re-mo­bilise and com­plete the mul­ti-fam­i­ly hous­ing projects” for re­viewed costs.

It was not­ed that at that time, over $4 mil­lion had been spent on the Co­conut Grove project. The cost on com­ple­tion was list­ed as over $16 mil­lion.

Ac­cord­ing to a news­pa­per re­port, when the hous­es were al­lo­cat­ed on Jan­u­ary 28, 2009, and keys were hand­ed out for 51 of the 58 hous­es in the de­vel­op­ment, the HDC gave the cost of the project as $18.7 mil­lion.

The Sun­day Guardian reached out to HDC chair­man New­man George and Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Brent Lyons for com­ment with­out suc­cess. Ques­tions sent to both men via What­sapp were not an­swered.

Con­cerns raised in Par­lia­ment in 2008: Swamp dec­i­mat­ed, ex­pect a dis­as­ter

Dur­ing a bud­get de­bate in Par­lia­ment in Sep­tem­ber 2008, then Op­po­si­tion MP for Ma­yaro Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters raised sev­er­al con­cerns about the Co­conut Grove project.

Pe­ters said the swamp had been dec­i­mat­ed to make room for hous­es but some of the units con­struct­ed were de­mol­ished af­ter they flood­ed dur­ing con­struc­tion.

“On­ly re­cent­ly in Ma­yaro they went ahead in their haste to bring peo­ple and put them in homes—there peo­ple re­al­ly need homes; some are still un­der their grand­moth­er's, moth­er's and fa­ther's hous­es. In their haste to build these homes, they dec­i­mat­ed the swamp. They built the homes so quick­ly that af­ter three floods they had to de­mol­ish five of them and now the peo­ple are liv­ing in some oth­er hous­es they built on the oth­er side of the road,” Pe­ters had said.

Pe­ters, who was born and bred in Ma­yaro, warned that the Or­toire Riv­er would over­flow and flood the de­vel­op­ment.

“It is on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore we have some kind of rip tide and the Or­toire Riv­er over­flows its banks and all those hous­es are washed away and we have some kind of dis­as­ter. That is a dis­as­ter wait­ing to hap­pen. I hope it nev­er does, but it looks like that.”

In a Sun­day Guardian sto­ry in 2009, then Hous­ing Min­istry com­mu­ni­ca­tions di­rec­tor Annabelle Bras­nell said the HDC had done "ma­jor drainage and wa­ter con­trol work on the project".

Bras­nell said then that four-feet-high pil­lars had been built to sup­port the hous­es but were "short­ened" when the land around the hous­es were lat­er back­filled.