De­siree See­baran

Point Fortin has birthed some amaz­ing Tri­nis, from mul­ti­ple so­ca monarch win­ning fa­ther and daugh­ter Austin Lyons and Fay Ann Lyons-Al­varez to sports­men like Av­ery John and Ken­wyne Jones. But the bor­ough has al­ways been large­ly iso­lat­ed from Trinidad's met­ro­pol­i­tan cen­tres of San Fer­nan­do (which is near­er) and Port-of-Spain.

Poor roads and high lev­els of traf­fic make it dif­fi­cult for Point Fortin peo­ple to mix with the rest of the is­land. The so­lu­tion? A high­way ex­ten­sion from San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way, which has been in the pipeline even be­fore T&T gained its in­de­pen­dence. But ac­tu­al con­struc­tion on­ly be­gan this year.

Min­is­ter of Works Jack Warn­er start­ed the process when he hand­ed over a $1.5 bil­lion cheque to the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Co (Nid­co) in June 2011. Right now, trac­tors and oth­er heavy equip­ment are prepar­ing the land for build­ing. And many Point Fortin and south res­i­dents wel­come the progress that the high­way will bring.

"I will high­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the high­way be­cause it takes me hours to come from Port-of-Spain to Point Fortin when I go for goods," said shop own­er Harold Ma­haraj. "And we have no oth­er al­ter­na­tive route un­less we go all the way around through Pe­nal, which takes an hour and a half."

Point Fortin to San Fer­nan­do route taxi dri­ver Au­gus­tine Fran­cois said: "The amount of cars that there are now, the ex­ist­ing route can't re­al­ly cater for. ...The high­way will be a good thing." Ka­farah Down­ing who goes to school in San Fer­nan­do said: "If have to leave to go to San Fer­nan­do, I have to leave two hours be­fore, just to reach on time."

Un­em­ploy­ment is al­so high in the bor­ough, so Al­bert George is glad that the high­way project "is pro­vid­ing work for peo­ple. "These young peo­ple don't have work," he added.

Re-route the high­way

But along the planned high­way con­struc­tion route, a group of con­cerned res­i­dents and stake­hold­ers in Debe, Pe­nal and San Fran­cique com­mu­ni­ties are protest­ing the high­way's con­struc­tion. They've or­gan­ised in­to a group called the High­way Re-Route Move­ment, and are call­ing for the Prime Min­is­ter to hear their con­cerns.

Wayne Kublals­ingh, a well-known en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist, is lob­by­ing with the group. "This high­way is one of the most flawed en­gi­neer­ing con­cepts in the his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go," Kublals­ingh said. "They want to build a 9.1 mile stretch of high­way across a flood-prone area. "Three hun­dred fam­i­lies live there in well-es­tab­lished com­mu­ni­ties.

"They want to move an or­phan­age, which cost be­tween five and six mil­lion dol­lars, com­mu­ni­ty fund­ed...They want to alien­ate thou­sands of acres of agri­cul­tur­al land. "They haven't prop­er­ly con­sult­ed with the res­i­dents, and most of them are against it." The Re-Route Move­ment's mem­bers all have homes and land which may be ap­pro­pri­at­ed by the Gov­ern­ment dur­ing the con­struc­tion of the Gol­con­da to Mon De­sir sec­tion of the high­way.

They are con­cerned that the con­struc­tion of the high­way will dec­i­mate their tight­ly-knit com­mu­ni­ties and di­vest them of her­itage land owned for gen­er­a­tions. Kublalas­ingh said 250 of the 300 fam­i­lies that would be af­fect­ed had signed a pe­ti­tion ad­dressed to the Prime Min­is­ter, ask­ing her to re­con­sid­er the high­way route.

Pinky Sub­rath is in her 80s and has owned her two acres of land for 25 years. It was marsh­land when she bought it. "Peo­ple gas tank used to float away here," she said. Af­ter years of grad­u­al­ly fill­ing the marsh with dirt and just a few months shy of com­plet­ing her house, she has stopped build­ing. She was told that her land and new house fell in the path of the pro­posed high­way.

"We don't want the high­way here at all," she said, her rest­less bird-like fig­ure flut­ter­ing back and forth as we talk near the edge of her prop­er­ty. "We've had many sleep­less nights," said Crys­tal Bood­hai, an­oth­er res­i­dent of the Pe­nal area that the high­way is ex­pect­ed to cut through. Her sis­ter and cousin sit silent be­side her; her young son plays with his fa­ther a few feet away.

"Very lit­tle has been said to us...We've had very lit­tle con­sul­ta­tion on this mat­ter," she said. Al­fred Sookal, a mem­ber of the move­ment, said: "We are not against de­vel­op­ment. "We are not against the peo­ple in Point Fortin want­i­ng to get con­nec­tiv­i­ty from San Fer­nan­do," he said. "But the man­ner in which you do it is what we have a con­cern with."

But Nid­co pres­i­dent Dr Car­son Charles says that res­i­dents have nev­er voiced their con­cerns with Nid­co and at present the com­pa­ny had no in­ten­tion of re-rout­ing the pro­posed high­way plan. Con­trary to res­i­dents' claims, Charles said Nid­co had been in talks with all the com­mu­ni­ty groups and their "gen­uine rep­re­sen­ta­tives" and was will­ing to lis­ten to any group that ap­proached them.

And he main­tained that the high­way project would move on as planned. "The idea of re-rout­ing the high­way is not re-rout­ing at all," Charles said. "In oth­er words, they don't want a high­way from Debe on." He al­so claimed that the re­lo­ca­tion process for this high­way project had un­prece­dent­ed ben­e­fits for the res­i­dents.

"We have an out­reach cen­tre es­tab­lished in the Debe area, specif­i­cal­ly for the peo­ple," he ex­plained. Charles said the cen­tre had been open since last year, and was staffed with a psy­chol­o­gist and a com­mu­ni­ty leader who could ad­dress the res­i­dents' con­cerns. He said Nid­co con­sult­ed with the res­i­dents to ask them where they would like to move their com­mu­ni­ty to and they were to re­ceive com­pen­sa­tion through a pri­vate treaty with the com­pa­ny.

Nid­co was pay­ing for the prop­er­ties to be val­ued as well, he added. "This is un­prece­dent­ed," Charles said with a broad smile.

Con­cern over flood­ing

The Re-Route Move­ment al­so has a wider con­cern, one that will af­fect every­one who lives and works in the area of the Oropouche La­goon. Flood­ing has al­ways been a ma­jor con­cern for ar­eas along the swampy la­goon in south Trinidad; it is a basin for trib­u­taries that flow down from the South­ern and Cen­tral moun­tain ranges, and fa­cil­i­tates the wa­ter's flow out to the sea.

The Re-Route Move­ment mem­bers fear that as the high­way cuts a swathe across the la­goon, it will ob­struct the free flow of wa­ter from the swampy land out to the sea and even worse flood­ing will oc­cur. And ac­cord­ing to cor­re­spon­dence be­tween the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), these fears do have some sci­en­tif­ic mer­it.

In Oc­to­ber 2009, the Di­rec­tor of Drainage wrote to the CEO of the EMA about his ob­ser­va­tions on the En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment (EIA) con­duct­ed by the then Min­istry of Works and Trans­port in ap­pli­ca­tion for a cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance (CEC) for the high­way project, stat­ing that the doc­u­ment from the Works Min­istry on­ly ad­dressed im­me­di­ate drainage from the pro­posed high­way and not the im­pact of ad­di­tion­al runoff.

Lat­er in Oc­to­ber 2009, the CEO of the EMA wrote to the min­istry, iden­ti­fy­ing "sev­er­al de­fi­cien­cies" with­in the En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment sub­mit­ted to the EMA: a need for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the nat­ur­al and ar­ti­fi­cial drainage sys­tems in the ar­eas where the pro­posed high­way will pass. It calls for re­spons­es to these short­com­ings be­fore the CEC can be grant­ed.

The Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty al­so weighed in on the EIA via a let­ter to the CEO of the EMA in No­vem­ber 2009. "One gets the im­pres­sion that there is no com­mit­ment to def­i­nite mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures. This con­clu­sion is on ac­count of the 'lan­guage' used through­out the re­port, name­ly '...should be avoid­ed,' '...the con­trac­tor should take all that is nec­es­sary...' There is an ab­sence of the word 'will'"

On Feb­ru­ary 17, 2010, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port sent its re­sponse, with­out the ad­di­tion­al drainage in­for­ma­tion re­quest­ed by the EMA or ad­di­tion­al com­mit­ments to mit­i­gate the neg­a­tive ef­fects of con­struc­tion, as re­quest­ed by WASA. Ac­cord­ing to the file, the cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance was grant­ed on April 20, 2010.

The EMA de­fend­ed its de­ci­sion to grant the CEC in a state­ment re­sponse to ques­tions posed by Guardian Me­dia re­porters: "The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port gen­er­al­ly sat­is­fied all the re­quire­ments for the EMA to grant a CEC with con­di­tions to the min­istry, since it felt that all po­ten­tial neg­a­tive im­pacts iden­ti­fied through the EIA could have been rea­son­ably mit­i­gat­ed by the mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures put for­ward."

Charles claimed that the high­way project would be built in such a way to en­gen­der less flood­ing, not more.

Her­itage site may be af­fect­ed

It seems that the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin high­way ex­ten­sion, not sat­is­fied with on­ly dis­plac­ing the liv­ing, may al­so dis­turb the rest­ing place of those long dead. Ban­wari Man is the old­est, most in­tact skele­ton found in the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean re­gion; a bril­liant ar­chae­o­log­i­cal find that most coun­tries would en­shrine in a mu­se­um and cel­e­brate as part of their her­itage.

Arche­ol­o­gist Pe­ter Har­ris said: "The Ban­wari bur­ial is about 6,500 years old. And a lot of peo­ple feel awe from that. When­ev­er I go to the ex­ca­va­tion, it's like look­ing through time," Har­ris is the one who found Ban­wari Man, al­most by ac­ci­dent he says, more the 30 years ago. The skele­ton is now housed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies St Au­gus­tine Life Sci­ences Mu­se­um and draws cu­ri­ous vis­i­tors as well as mem­bers of the Amerindi­an com­mu­ni­ty who still leave of­fer­ings to this sa­cred an­ces­tor.

Sites like these, Har­ris ex­plained, should be pro­tect­ed by the Gov­ern­ment. "We don't have a his­to­ry of her­itage sites," he said. "If there was a de­ci­sion by the (Siparia Re­gion­al) Cor­po­ra­tion to make this a her­itage site, it's the first of its kind." Har­ris is con­cerned that the same prong of the pro­posed San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way that will af­fect Re-Route Move­ment mem­bers will al­so pass with­in 200 me­tres of Ban­wari Trace in San Fran­cique, the site where Ban­wari Man was found and where un­known arche­o­log­i­cal trea­sures may still be buried.

"The pro­posed high­way will cross Ban­wari Trace, about 200 me­tres from the site, and cause a buildup of flood­ing in the area," said Kublals­ingh. He added that the con­struc­tion and pos­si­ble re­sul­tant flood­ing may al­so have an im­pact on oth­er, as yet undis­cov­ered ar­chae­o­log­i­cal sites in the area.

How­ev­er, for­mer San Fran­cique Vil­lage Coun­cil chair­man Ken Jaglal said he doesn't be­lieve that the high­way project would af­fect the Ban­wari site. He said the Gov­ern­ment of T&T pur­chased the Ban­wari site from his fa­ther in 2000 and the site was now be­ing de­vel­oped by the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Jaglal said.

He main­tained that he was on the side of the High­way Re-Route Move­ment; he even did some lob­by­ing on their be­half while he served on the vil­lage coun­cil. "But I don't see how the high­way would im­pact on the site," he said. "There are a lot of hous­es much clos­er to the pro­posed high­way."

"The site is well pro­tect­ed...It's now fenced and they are be­gin­ning to put in fa­cil­i­ties. "And for me, know­ing the facts, it weak­ens the ar­gu­ment of the peo­ple who are against the high­way."