The col­lapse of the South Trunk Road at Mos­qui­to Creek has led to the loss of mil­lions of tax­pay­ers dol­lars, but this is not the on­ly fall­out as valu­able fish spawn­ing grounds are now in dan­ger.

Bor­der­ing the edge of the Oropouche swamp and run­ning par­al­lel to the west­ern coasts of the Gulf of Paria, the road up­grade was ex­pect­ed to solve the peren­ni­al flood­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by com­muters for decades.

As part of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion project, this part of the high­way dubbed Pack­age 5 A re­quired the most tech­ni­cal en­gi­neer­ing and cost tax­pay­ers more than $280 mil­lion.

But al­most three years af­ter the first two-kilo­me­tre lanes were opened, the new­ly con­struct­ed high­way is now falling apart. 

Un­der the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion, a cause­way (a raised road or track across the low or wet ground) was pro­posed to safe­guard the wet­lands but this idea was shelved as it was deemed too ex­pen­sive and would re­quire an­oth­er Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance.

The ques­tion now be­ing asked is whether the cause­way would have been the best op­tion to pro­tect the man­grove.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Pres­i­dent of the South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion group Ed­ward Mood­ie said the cause­way would have been aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing and would have safe­guard­ed plant and ma­rine life.

"I was a con­sul­tant at NID­CO (Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed) and they aban­doned the idea of a cause­way be­cause it would have meant go­ing back to the EMA for a CEC and they were afraid of (Wayne) Kublals­ingh," Mood­ie said.

Con­sul­tant at the project un­der both the UNC and the PNM was Amer­i­can multi­na­tion­al en­gi­neer­ing firm AE­COM which boasts 100 years of en­gi­neer­ing ex­pe­ri­ence on its web­site. Hal­crow Ltd was al­so part of the en­gi­neer­ing and de­signs while Jusam­co Pavers Lim­it­ed, al­so known as Ju­nior Sam­my con­trac­tors ex­e­cut­ed the con­struc­tion of the project ac­cord­ing to the spec­i­fied de­signs.

But Mood­ie, who did ex­ten­sive re­search on the swamp, said it was on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore the en­tire area col­laps­es. 

He said be­cause of the ex­ist­ing col­lapse, the project should be halt­ed im­me­di­ate­ly un­til prop­er hy­dro­log­i­cal stud­ies are done. He not­ed that an en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact as­sess­ment should be done as the project is hav­ing a dev­as­tat­ing im­pact on the fish spawn­ing grounds.

President of the South Oropouche Riverine Flood Action Group Edward Moodie, second from left, shows debris from the highway which clogged the river last year.

"There is a sand­bank form­ing in the Gulf of Paria that is about 50 feet to 75 feet from where the high­way is sink­ing. The pres­sure of grav­el is push­ing un­der and com­ing out in the soft­est area. We mea­sured the crack on the walls and it is widen­ing," Mood­ie said.

High­way de­bris clogs the wa­ter­cours­es

Many species of fish­es in­clud­ing boshay and grantikai have not been able to spawn, Mood­ie added. The swamp, he said, is a breed­ing ground for 29 species of fish and nu­mer­ous species of crus­tacean crabs, oys­ters, mam­mals, ro­dents, rep­tiles, am­phib­ians and birds.

"The riv­er is blocked up so the fish­es can­not leave the sea to go up­riv­er. They nor­mal­ly spawn in the man­grove roots which pro­tect the fin­ger­lings from preda­tors. There are on­ly two rivers that ex­it in­to the Gulf and the mouth of the Gordineau Riv­er is still blocked up af­ter the con­struc­tion of the bridge," Mood­ie said.

This was con­firmed by Wood­land fish­er­men who said they have to ma­noeu­vre be­tween rocks to pre­vent dam­age to their boat en­gines

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the man­grove re­cent­ly and saw ev­i­dence of high­way de­bris lit­ter­ing the man­groves. Ge­o­t­ex­tile ma­te­ri­als, coils of fab­ric and pieces of steel pro­trud­ed from the sea, a dan­ger­ous trap to wildlife habi­tat. 

Fish­es, crus­taceans and birds of­ten get caught in the de­bris and die. 

Even though the south­bound car­riage­way re­mains open, taxi dri­vers said the area where the Gordineau Bridge is lo­cat­ed has start­ed to sink.

One of the cracks which widened along the Solomon Hochoy, Highway Extension project, Mosquito Creek.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

"This area is hold­ing up bet­ter than the north­bound car­riage­way which is un­der con­struc­tion and it is be­cause un­der the UNC we piled mounds of ma­te­ri­als to cre­ate an el­e­va­tion and we wait­ed for over 14 months for it to set­tle be­fore we start­ed to build," for­mer works min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan re­vealed.

He not­ed that un­der his pre­de­ces­sor, a cause­way was con­sid­ered which would have been aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing and would have had no im­pact on the man­groves. How­ev­er, Ram­bachan said this was not pur­sued as it was cost­ly.

Ram­bachan could not pro­vide any de­tails of the pro­posed cost but not­ed that it was not im­pos­si­ble to build a road through marsh­lands as this was done in Flori­da and oth­er parts of the world.

 Iron­i­cal­ly, de­spite en­gi­neer­ing chal­lenges and the im­pact on the near­by wet­lands, Pack­age 5 A was not op­posed by High­way Reroute Move­ment's Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh who fought the Mon De­sir seg­ment.

How­ev­er, last week he said he was not sur­prised by the fail­ure at Mos­qui­to Creek as no prop­er hy­dro­log­i­cal study had been done be­fore the project was ex­e­cut­ed.

He said "bo­gus hy­draulics" was built "with­out un­der­stand­ing the hy­drol­o­gy and they have cost tax­pay­ers bil­lions of dol­lars."

Kublals­ingh called on the Gov­ern­ment to do a prop­er hy­draulic sys­tem, bridges, cul­verts, em­bank­ments so they can have a prop­er flow of wa­ter from the riv­er to the sea.

Sinanan waits for re­port 

Min­is­ter of Works Ro­han Sinanan said last week he was await­ing a re­port pend­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the cause of the col­lapse. The in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing to de­ter­mine what caused the fail­ure.

"To min­imise prop­a­ga­tion of the fail­ures, the earth fill and pave­ment loads on the em­bank­ment were im­me­di­ate­ly re­duced. The sit­u­a­tion is be­ing mon­i­tored by sur­vey­ors three times dai­ly to map the move­ment of the in­sta­bil­i­ty," Sinanan said.

He said the de­sign­ers were do­ing a de­tailed re­view of ge­ot­ech­ni­cal as­sump­tions on the ex­ist­ing sites "to gen­er­ate a rel­e­vant site-spe­cif­ic so­lu­tion."

AE­COM en­gi­neers de­clined to com­ment.

Last Sun­day, Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed the col­lapse of the sea revet­ment wall and the sink­ing of a 180-me­tre stretch of paved road­way. Since then, the en­tire area has been dug up and armed guards sta­tioned at the site to pre­vent the me­dia from cap­tur­ing the fur­ther de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the $280 mil­lion project.

His­to­ry of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion

The first road across Mos­qui­to Creek was built by Vic­to­ri­an en­gi­neers ac­cord­ing to promi­nent re­searcher Glen Bead­on. He said it was a two-mile ‘cor­duroy’ road (ear­ly log road or tim­ber track-way) which was built in 1852 for "£1855 Ster­ling."

The de­ci­sion to build the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way was in the mak­ing for over 30 years. The Na­tion­al Phys­i­cal De­vel­op­ment Plan of 1984 in­clud­ed an align­ment for such a high­way in­clu­sive of the de­vel­op­ment of Mos­qui­to Creek. In 1998, a pre-fea­si­bil­i­ty study was done. A full fea­si­bil­i­ty study and ini­tial de­signs were done by LEA-Trin­to­plan and Eco­engi­neer­ing be­tween 2005-2007. That fi­nal re­port in­di­cat­ed the 1998 study out­lined the need for a more di­rect route be­tween San Fer­nan­do and Point Fortin-La Brea. It high­light­ed traf­fic de­lays on sec­tions of SS Erin Road from Cross Cross­ing to Siparia as well as traf­fic de­lays on the two-lane sec­tion of South Trunk Road and South­ern Main Road, be­tween Cross Cross­ings and St Mary’s Junc­tion.

AE­COM and Hal­crow were con­sul­tants on the project and were in charge of en­gi­neer­ing de­signs.

Mos­qui­to Creek was said to be the most tech­ni­cal as­pect of the high­way. OAS Con­struc­tura failed to com­plete the road ex­ten­sion along the creek.

In June 2018, the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced that it will di­vide the project in­to pack­ages to boost com­pe­ti­tion among lo­cal con­trac­tors and so dri­ve down prices.

 Jusam­co Pavers Ltd and Na­mal­co Con­struc­tion Ser­vices Ltd ten­dered to com­plete Pack­age Five. Jusam­co's bids were 4.32 per cent and 2.4 per cent low­er than Na­mal­co's es­ti­mate, while Lutch­meesingh’s Trans­port Con­trac­tors Ltd, Sino­hy­dro Cor­po­ra­tion Ltd, and Gen­er­al Earth Movers Ltd’s of­fers were high­er by 8.4 per cent, 15.51 per cent and 19.3 per cent re­spec­tive­ly.

Af­ter eval­u­a­tion Jusam­co was de­ter­mined to have of­fered the most eco­nom­i­cal­ly ad­van­ta­geous price and was rec­om­mend­ed for ne­go­ti­a­tions, fol­low­ing which a re­vised fi­nal bid of $280,976,489.08 VAT in­clu­sive, some 6.54 per cent low­er than the es­ti­mate, was sub­mit­ted.