Gail Alexan­der

A lot of the flood­ing prob­lem in down­town Port-of-Spain is be­ing caused by con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty in­clud­ing Gov­ern­ment's cam­pus sec­tor and the Wa­ter­front, says Works Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

At the Gov­ern­ment's week­ly news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Im­bert said con­sul­tants had been work­ing on a long-term plan to al­le­vi­ate the sit­u­a­tion.

But, he added, that this would even­tu­al­ly en­tail de­mo­li­tion and re­lo­ca­tion of some build­ings in or­der to im­ple­ment a new drainage sys­tem to re­place the small sys­tem which was al­most 60 years old. Im­bert said con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty on some build­ings caused silt and de­bris to clog drains, fur­ther­ing the prob­lem.

As long as there was con­struc­tion work in the area, Im­bert said, the "drain ca­pac­i­ty" prob­lem would con­tin­ue. Once drains were cleaned every six months, the prob­lem re­mained in check, so far, he added. How­ev­er, he said city drains had been cleaned in April for the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as and had now been found to be full again. Apart from it be­ing a sea lev­el is­sue, Im­bert said the drainage sys­tem in the city was just too small to hold the amount of wa­ter that was now gen­er­at­ed. Im­bert said he had in­struct­ed the Drainage Di­vi­sion to look at the flood-prone ar­eas in down­town Port-of-Spain, Rich­mond Street, Abat­toir Road and oth­er ar­eas.