Ex­ces­sive flood­ing dur­ing the rainy sea­son is yet an­oth­er prob­lem that suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have not been able to solve over the decades. So too is the ex­pect­ed po­lit­i­cal flare-up, usu­al­ly taint­ed with a fair help­ing of al­le­ga­tions about spite­ful ne­glect in well-known flood-prone ar­eas.

Over the last cou­ple of decades, a good show­er has turned parts of the cap­i­tal Port-of-Spain in­to a vir­tu­al lake, traf­fic is snarled and com­muters race for trans­port to get out be­fore flood­wa­ters make cross­ing the canals near im­pos­si­ble. The re­al­i­ty is that the drainage in­fra­struc­ture of the city has re­mained ar­cha­ic while wa­ter pour­ing from the hills has in­creased over time.

In this most re­cent episode of flood­ing, the heav­i­est im­pact has been on res­i­dents in cen­tral and south Trinidad, with the usu­al de­struc­tion of farm­ers’ crops. Un­der­stand­ably, sev­er­al min­is­ters in the new Gov­ern­ment have been out and about seek­ing to di­rect re­cov­ery ef­forts and demon­strate their con­cerns for res­i­dents and farm­ers, whose homes, busi­ness places and agri­cul­tur­al crops have been del­uged and de­stroyed in in­stances by flood­wa­ters. Get­ting in­volved is how it should be, as look­ing af­ter the wel­fare of the peo­ple is one of the most im­por­tant rea­sons for hav­ing a gov­ern­ment.

Plac­ing all of the above in the right con­text, the ab­solute re­quire­ments are for long-term so­lu­tions be­yond clear­ing the wa­ter cours­es dur­ing the year and dredg­ing rivers at a few points. Long-term plan­ning, the con­struc­tion and de­vel­op­ment of phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture, the des­ig­na­tion and lo­ca­tion of lands for hous­ing, farm­ing and oth­er spe­cif­ic needs away from the ar­eas where wa­ter makes its way from the hills and moun­tains, is an ab­solute pri­or­i­ty.

In Port-of-Spain, it is well known that the drainage sys­tem has be­come in­ca­pable of han­dling the flow of wa­ter, not on­ly from do­mes­tic us­age, but from the con­tin­u­ing degra­da­tion of the sur­round­ing hills and block­ages in the wa­ter cours­es. All of the above and more will con­tin­ue if the ef­forts are fo­cused pri­mar­i­ly on clean­ing up af­ter the fact and even the pre-rainy sea­son clear­ing of de­bris from the rivers.

Over the decades, there have been sug­ges­tions, even out­lined plans, to counter the ex­ces­sive wa­ter flow in cer­tain ar­eas. Such sug­ges­tions have in­clud­ed re­strict­ing or pre­vent­ing hous­ing set­tle­ments close to the nat­ur­al flow of rivers and streams, and the cre­ation of wa­ter catch­ment basins as reser­voirs which can be used imag­i­na­tive­ly and pro­duc­tive­ly by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty. So too in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns have been mount­ed to save us from our un­think­ing and de­struc­tive habits.

The sit­u­a­tions in oth­er parts of the coun­try are a lit­tle more di­verse but find­ing so­lu­tions to those prob­lems are not in­sur­mount­able, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en that many of them are of­ten man­made.

The present is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for this ad­min­is­tra­tion at the cen­tral and lo­cal gov­ern­ment lev­els to seek long-term so­lu­tions which are dif­fer­ent from what was done by pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions. The quest for so­lu­tions should be­gin by mon­i­tor­ing and re­search­ing the cur­rent flood­ing pat­terns to ap­pre­ci­ate the larg­er di­men­sions of the prob­lem.

If the Gov­ern­ment can sur­vive crit­i­cism dur­ing this rainy sea­son by tak­ing refuge in al­lo­cat­ing blame to the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion for the flood­ing, that will not hold for the com­ing years of its tenure. With the sure­ty of world cli­mat­ic changes caus­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal hav­oc and degra­da­tion all around the world, on­ly work­able so­lu­tions will cre­ate the turn­around need­ed.