In the sec­ond of this two-part se­ries JO­HANNES C Non­ner as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor at the In­sti­tute for Wa­ter Ed­u­ca­tion of UN­ESCO-IHE in The Nether­lands of­fers up some so­lu­tions based on his vast ex­pe­ri­ence to the huge prob­lem of flood­ing in T&T af­ter a heavy rain­fall.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is vast­ly dif­fer­ent from The Nether­lands. The so­cio-eco­nom­ic struc­ture, the cul­ture, but al­so the phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment of the is­land states ap­pear to have noth­ing in com­mon with the Dutch main­land delta area in Eu­rope. Trinidad and To­ba­go com­pris­es two is­lands which have rocky moun­tain ranges and blessed with a pleas­ant trop­i­cal cli­mate, where­as The Nether­lands is part of a con­ti­nent, is pre­dom­i­nant­ly flat and, es­pe­cial­ly in win­ter, has a harsh cold cli­mate. De­spite this con­trast the two coun­tries still have a lot in com­mon. Both states have a long coast­line that may be threat­ened by ris­ing sea lev­els as a re­sult of cli­mate change, are char­ac­terised by sen­si­tive delta­ic ar­eas and have a fair amount of heavy rain­fall lead­ing to the oc­ca­sion­al flood­ing of ur­ban ar­eas and the coun­try­side.

Both ter­ri­to­ries al­so have dense­ly-pop­u­lat­ed zones and en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns have to be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly. It is bet­ter to pre­vent than to clean up an en­vi­ron­men­tal mess. Flood­ing by the streams in Trinidad and To­ba­go is a char­ac­ter­is­tic of the is­lands, but seems to have ag­gra­vat­ed in the past de­cen­nia. As re­cent as Oc­to­ber 2011, the peo­ple of Trinidad suf­fered a se­ries of floods which in­un­dat­ed parts of the ur­ban belt and rur­al ar­eas bor­der­ing the north­ern moun­tain range. Al­though there was no loss of life, the eco­nom­ic and en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age was large. Crops on the fields were de­stroyed and mud cur­rents dam­aged hous­es and their in­te­ri­ors.

Hu­man waste in the area, in­clud­ing plas­tic bot­tles, bags, cloths, and even pieces of fur­ni­ture and car tires, were washed down by the flood wa­ters. In­deed, a per­fect way to get rid of the lo­cal waste, but its trans­port through the riv­er sys­tem to cause en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age in the down­stream and delta­ic ar­eas can nev­er have been the in­ten­tion of the peo­ple con­cerned. The part­ly-chan­nelled streams in Trinidad and To­ba­go with their re­strict­ed stream bed ar­eas and in­suf­fi­cient sec­ondary drainage chan­nels which al­so tend to be­come blocked heav­i­ly con­tribute to the oc­cur­rence of un­con­trolled floods and en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cern. Can the flood­ing prob­lems in Trinidad and To­ba­go be re­duced and even­tu­al­ly even be re­solved?

The ob­vi­ous an­swer ap­pears to be to in­crease the drainage ca­pac­i­ty in the flood prone ar­eas by the con­struc­tion of more drainage chan­nels so that wa­ter can dis­charge quick­er to the sea. Al­though this ap­proach can be very ef­fec­tive, one may al­so look at the is­sue from a dif­fer­ent an­gle. In­stead of try­ing to get rid of the floods as quick­ly as pos­si­ble one may al­so con­sid­er to store the ex­cess wa­ter tem­porar­i­ly in des­ig­nat­ed ar­eas. For ex­am­ple, the flood­ing in the ur­ban belt in north­ern Trinidad could be re­duced by widen­ing the nat­ur­al stream chan­nels, cre­at­ing wa­ter de­ten­tion ar­eas and con­sid­er­ing the re­al­i­sa­tion of ad­di­tion­al stream chan­nels, all set in a nat­ur­al eco­log­i­cal and en­vi­ron­ment-friend­ly con­text. Op­er­at­ing in this way al­so en­hances the re­plen­ish­ment of the ground­wa­ter re­serves in the al­lu­vial fan de­posits which are un­der­ly­ing the ur­ban belt.

The stor­age for flood wa­ter and the cre­ation of na­ture along Trinida­di­an and To­bag­on­ian streams ties in with the con­cepts of 'space' for the riv­er and 'eco­log­i­cal cor­ri­dors' as prac­tised in The Nether­lands. Al­though space will al­ways re­main an is­sue these con­cepts could work on the is­lands, even in the heav­i­ly-ur­banised ar­eas of the coun­try. The in­tro­duc­tion of mea­sures to re­duce flood risks and to re­store the en­vi­ron­ment means that wa­ter man­agers, hy­drol­o­gists and en­gi­neers should have the knowl­edge to tack­le the is­sues at stake.

As a con­tri­bu­tion to trans­fer­ring the re­quired knowl­edge, the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go did take the ini­tia­tive to re­quest a project fo­cus­ing on wa­ter is­sues.

The project re­quest was worked out by UN­ESCO-IHE of Delft in The Nether­lands and the Dutch Gov­ern­ment, the Eu­ro­pean Union, and Caribbean or­gan­i­sa­tions fi­nan­cial­ly sup­port­ed the project. The project which is of­fi­cial­ly named Ca­pac­i­ty Build­ing for Wa­ter Pro­grammes in High­er Ed­u­ca­tion in the Caribbean start­ed by the end of 2008 and was sched­uled to be con­clud­ed by the end of 2011. Amongst the many ac­tiv­i­ties of the project, al­so be­ing ex­e­cut­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Guyana and Costaatt, were short cours­es on riv­er process­es, flood mod­el­ling and flood con­trol. Many pro­fes­sion­als of the re­gion at­tend­ed the cours­es show­ing the healthy in­ter­est the Caribbean has in un­der­stand­ing and solv­ing the prob­lems as­so­ci­at­ed with riv­er flood­ing and en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion.

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