RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA
rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Civ­il en­gi­neer at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Dr Don Samuel, said a na­tion­al drainage study is need­ed now to solve this coun­try's flood­ing cri­sis.

This, as flood wa­ters rav­aged com­mu­ni­ties in North and East Trinidad, wash­ing away ve­hi­cles and sweep­ing away hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars’ worth of valu­ables.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia as parts of T&T re­mained un­der Or­ange Alert for river­ine flood­ing, Dr Samuel said in­creased sur­face runoff in re­cent times has been a re­sult of cli­mate change.

"The ca­pac­i­ty of drainage in­fra­struc­ture has been ex­ceed­ed due to in­ad­e­quate and ob­so­lete drainage," Dr Samuel ex­plained.

He said the loss of ef­fi­cient drainage paths, as well as pol­lu­tion of drains and wa­ter cours­es, has ex­ac­er­bat­ed the prob­lems.

Say­ing spillage in­to ad­ja­cent road­ways and com­mu­ni­ties has been the re­sult of un­planned de­vel­op­ments, Dr Samuel said there al­so is an ur­gent need to crack down on un­scrupu­lous de­vel­op­ers and un­per­mit­ted quar­ry­ing.

Dr Samuel said with the in­creased preva­lence of floods, it is im­por­tant to take ac­tion now.

"We must com­mis­sion a Na­tion­al Drainage Study, which will ex­am­ine the ef­fi­cien­cy of the coun­try's drainage net­work," the civ­il en­gi­neer ex­plained.  

“This study will al­so iden­ti­fy the high-risk ar­eas of flood­ing," he said.

He al­so rec­om­mend­ed an in­crease in the re­sourc­ing of the Wa­ter Re­sources Agency.

"The Drainage Di­vi­sion al­so needs more re­sources so it can pro­vide dig­i­tal­ized flood maps for the coun­try," Dr Samuel said.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Samuel, to al­le­vi­ate any loss of lives and prop­er­ties, it is im­por­tant to en­force plan­ning, en­vi­ron­men­tal and pol­lu­tion laws so that flood zones can be es­tab­lished.

"We need to ad­dress il­le­gal dump­ing and il­le­gal quar­ry­ing. Dump­ing in wa­ter­cours­es must be a thing of the past," Dr Samuel added.

Dur­ing the past two years, squat­ting has es­ca­lat­ed in many parts of the coun­try. Valu­able forests have been chopped down in the east­ern parts of Trinidad, re­sult­ing in dev­as­tat­ing floods.

Il­le­gal quar­ry­ing al­so has caused ex­ten­sive pol­lu­tion of nat­ur­al wa­ter­cours­es, de­struc­tion of wildlife and forests, ir­repara­ble dam­age to the ecosys­tem and the en­vi­ron­ment, flood­ing and dis­tress in peace­ful com­mu­ni­ties.

In Oc­to­ber 2021, of­fi­cers at­tached to the Mul­ti-Agency Task Force of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) cracked down on an il­le­gal quar­ry­ing site at the for­est re­serve in Matu­ra. Waller­field farm­ers al­so have com­plained that armed gang mem­bers have chased them off le­git­i­mate farm­ing ar­eas so that they could do il­le­gal quar­ry­ing.

Dur­ing a re­cent in­ter­view, Con­ser­va­tor of Forests Den­ny Dipchans­ingh said T&T’s forests were be­ing bull­dozed by un­scrupu­lous quar­ry op­er­a­tors. He said the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion needs to fill posts for some 70 to 80 foresters and 50 for­est rangers.

Con­ser­va­tor Dipchans­ingh said over the past decade, 213 hectares of forests have been de­stroyed in T&T.