To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

In one of the great ironies of bu­reau­cra­cy, the drainage plan cre­at­ed by the late Dr Em­ru Mil­lette close to three decades ago is be­ing ac­tive­ly con­sid­ered as a path to so­lu­tions for the re­cur­rent flood­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Dr Mil­lette did not live to see the re­sults of this re­vival of ac­tive in­ter­est in his work. The en­gi­neer passed away on Fri­day at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal of med­ical com­pli­ca­tions. While the en­gi­neer's pass­ing is a gen­uine loss to the coun­try and the tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ty, the re­al tragedy of Mil­lette's life is that af­ter decades in lim­bo, 2010 was shap­ing up to be the year when his long ref­er­enced mas­ter plan for drainage would fi­nal­ly have been re­leased from the re­straints of pol­i­tics.

When Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Jack Warn­er an­nounced his pro­pos­al to cre­ate an ap­pro­pri­ate­ly em­pow­ered Gov­ern­ment di­vi­sion ded­i­cat­ed to analysing and de­liv­er­ing so­lu­tions to the now an­nu­al flood prob­lems, he had Mil­lette in mind as his con­sult­ing czar for the an­ti-flood ef­fort. Ill-health made it im­pos­si­ble for the en­gi­neer to par­tic­i­pate and now his mind, if not his lega­cy, is for­ev­er lost to the na­tion and to the project that he had so en­er­get­i­cal­ly cham­pi­oned. Dr Mil­lette, in 1982, was the head of Mil­lette En­gi­neer­ing Ltd, when he was com­mis­sioned to do a study of the drainage and flood pat­terns that were even then plagu­ing the cap­i­tal city.

The project did not end well. Dis­putes about pay­ment led to le­gal ac­tion and even­tu­al­ly the his­toric levy on the City Cor­po­ra­tion of Port-of-Spain as mar­shals led by at­tor­ney Robin Mon­tano seized two floors worth of fur­ni­ture and 20 ve­hi­cles on the com­pound of the May­or's of­fice. It would not be un­til the state-owned Na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Bank in­ter­vened, grant­i­ng an un­se­cured loan to the Cor­po­ra­tion in the sum of the dis­put­ed $5.2 mil­lion, that the mat­ter was de­clared set­tled and the May­or's of­fice would get its prop­er­ty back. The hu­mil­i­a­tion of Mil­lette's le­gal ac­tion soured re­la­tions be­tween him and the PNM and he would nev­er again par­tic­i­pate ac­tive­ly in the par­ty's af­fairs, de­spite hav­ing served as Sen­ate Vice Pres­i­dent in the past.

The drainage plan, ful­ly paid for, was shelved and large­ly for­got­ten, even by suc­ceed­ing gov­ern­ments who would not have been en­cum­bered by the po­lit­i­cal in­er­tia as­so­ci­at­ed with the doc­u­ment. The plan passed quick­ly in­to leg­end, ref­er­enced like a kind of myth­i­cal grail when­ev­er there was se­ri­ous dis­cus­sion about lo­cal flood­ing prob­lems. Dr Mil­lette was known to share the doc­u­ment with in­ter­est­ed par­ties who were will­ing to get past his con­sid­er­able bit­ter­ness about the project and the par­ty he once served en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly. It's no sur­prise then to hear Richard Saun­ders, the Pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sion­al En­gi­neers of Trinidad and To­ba­go, de­scrib­ing the project Mil­lette did as "ex­cel­lent work."

"The re­port is still good," Saun­ders said. "It could be up­dat­ed and pro­vide an ex­cel­lent so­lu­tion to deal with the drainage prob­lem in the city." Pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil, Win­ston Ri­ley agreed. "It is an ex­cel­lent plan. All it needs is to be up­dat­ed. It was un­for­tu­nate that the plan was not im­ple­ment­ed be­fore." In the face of ring­ing en­dorse­ments by these lead­ing en­gi­neers and the Gov­ern­ment's long over­due in­ter­est in this sem­i­nal, lo­cal­ly grown work on a crit­i­cal civic prob­lem, it would be sen­si­ble for the next step to be the ap­point­ment of an eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee to re­view the plan and its ap­plic­a­bil­i­ty to to­day's en­vi­ron­ment, 28 years af­ter it was craft­ed.

There are is­sues al­ready ar­tic­u­lat­ed re­gard­ing the sit­ing of the of de­ten­tion ponds in the orig­i­nal plan since these are now the sites of mod­ern con­struc­tion, but there is clear con­fi­dence on the part of to­day's en­gi­neer­ing com­mu­ni­ty in the un­der­ly­ing sound­ness of the ap­proach of the Mil­lette plan to man­age drainage. All that re­mains now is for the Gov­ern­ment to put re­al world ac­tion in­to the re­view and ap­pli­ca­tion of one of the most over­due works projects in the re­cent his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go.