RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

As the height of the rainy sea­son ap­proach­es next month, Wood­land res­i­dents have re­newed their calls for ur­gent ac­tion to ad­dress per­sis­tent flood­ing in the Oropouche Drainage Basin.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Sat­ur­day, Pres­i­dent of the Wood­land Flood Group, Kevin Hard­uar, said the banks of the main wa­ter­cours­es, in­clud­ing the Bhag­ma­nia Riv­er, New Cut Chan­nel, South Oropouche Riv­er, and the Duck Pond Riv­er, have nev­er been fixed by the last gov­ern­ment.

“We have been mak­ing calls to our MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, who has giv­en his com­mit­ment to al­le­vi­ate the flood is­sues,” Hard­uar said.

He iden­ti­fied the New Cut Chan­nel as the most crit­i­cal area in need of at­ten­tion, not­ing that the river­bank has col­lapsed in sev­er­al places. “There are mul­ti­ple breach­es which were not re­paired and so when we have large amounts of rain­fall and wa­ter comes from Moru­ga, it over­flows and wash­es away parts of the river­bank. Cur­rent­ly we have one sec­tion of bank about 250–300 feet that has col­lapsed. It is a dis­as­ter wait­ing to hap­pen,” he said.

Hard­uar al­so high­light­ed prob­lems at the Duck Pond Chan­nel.

“Duck Pond Riv­er used to be fresh­wa­ter. How­ev­er, now we have sea crabs liv­ing in it be­cause cur­rent­ly it has salt wa­ter. The ex­ca­va­tor cleaned the grass but it was nev­er dredged. It is a cou­ple inch­es in some places," he re­vealed.

Hard­uar said res­i­dents want work done be­fore flood­wa­ters reach homes. “Pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance is al­ways bet­ter. It is bet­ter that we try to solve the is­sue now,” he said.

He not­ed that while con­trac­tors as­sist­ed in pre­vi­ous years, they lacked the ca­pac­i­ty to man­age the en­tire scope of works.

He added that while some weed clear­ing had been done, many rivers re­mained clogged. “Some places in the riv­er are as nar­row as prob­a­bly 8 feet, and we have fall­en trees in places where the riv­er is nar­row and not as deep as it should be. The New Cut Chan­nel and 14 Gate at Trinidad Point is leak­ing. At the mo­ment, when the gates are closed, there is still an in­flux of wa­ter com­ing in," he added.

Mean­while, Wood­land res­i­dent Tara Jaglal said flood­ing has been a re­cur­ring prob­lem. “We want a pump sta­tioned in Wood­land to drain floods. Floods are bad and we have been do­ing work in our homes from 2017 to now. We have been con­stant­ly rais­ing the perime­ters of homes. We putting up walls to al­le­vi­ate the floods,” she said.

Jaglal said the gov­ern­ment usu­al­ly re­sponds with tem­po­rary mea­sures. “Nor­mal­ly when it floods the gov­ern­ment send in equip­ment to do re­me­di­al work. We want the rivers cleaned in their en­tire­ty if we are to see any re­al progress with the flood­ing,” she said.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, MP for Oropouche West Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe said he has al­ready mo­bilised one con­trac­tor to clear drains. “I asked coun­cil­lors the ar­eas to iden­ti­fy wa­ter­cours­es in need of clean­ing, and I have for­ward­ed those ar­eas to the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Jear­lean John. Af­ter a meet­ing with her Drainage Di­vi­sion team is held on Mon­day, she will vis­it the con­stituen­cy," Dr Bo­doe said.

He added that all op­tions, in­clud­ing re­ten­tion ponds, will be pur­sued. “The im­me­di­ate thing will be to treat with the breach in the river­bank that we spoke about, and there are oth­er is­sues with flood­gates and we in­tend to deal with,” he said.

Bo­doe said the Drainage Di­vi­sion would look at an over­all plan. “I will do an overview of the whole basin, and drones will map the area, and then we will work at it," he added.