Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Peo­ple in com­mu­ni­ties across Trinidad, at­tempt­ing to re­build their lives in the af­ter­math of last week’s flood­ing, re­main stunned by the del­uge and de­struc­tion and are now ques­tion­ing whether the Gov­ern­ment is do­ing enough to mit­i­gate the im­pact of flood­ing in the coun­try.

 While hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars have been spent over sev­er­al years in an at­tempt to mit­i­gate flood­ing–through stud­ies and some in­fra­struc­tur­al work–thou­sands of peo­ple in cen­tral and south Trinidad, as well as ar­eas along the East-West cor­ri­dor, are yet to see the full ef­fects of those flood re­lief plans.

 Ap­prox­i­mate­ly $636.6 mil­lion was spent be­tween fis­cal years 2018 to 2022 on at­tempts to im­prove drainage in­fra­struc­ture and re­duce the im­pact of flood­ing, ac­cord­ing to Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­grammes doc­u­ments. But not even this large amount spent could help stop the cat­a­stroph­ic del­uge.

In fis­cal 2022 alone, $130.6 mil­lion was spent.

Here is a break­down of how the mon­ey was spent for some of the ma­jor projects:

*Of that fig­ure, $3 mil­lion was ex­pend­ed on the ad­vance­ment of projects un­der the Pro­gramme of Up­grade to Ex­ist­ing Drainage Pumps and Gate In­ven­to­ry.

 *The Tul­sa Trace (Pe­nal) pump house/gate struc­ture was ad­vanced to 95 per cent com­ple­tion, gate struc­tures in St Au­gus­tine to 25 per cent com­ple­tion, and gate struc­tures at Trinidad Point in Wood­land to 80 per cent com­ple­tion, while ten­der doc­u­ments for the up­grade of gates at Bam­boo No 2 were com­plet­ed and award­ed.

*An­oth­er $1.5 mil­lion was spent to ad­vance the Ma­jor Riv­er Clear­ing Pro­gramme for the Ca­roni Riv­er Im­prove­ment Project to 90 per cent com­ple­tion, while three pumps were pur­chased to help mit­i­gate the im­pact of flood­ing on prop­er­ties lo­cat­ed along the Ca­roni Riv­er.

 *$6.3 mil­lion was spent on flood mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures through the Man­age­ment and Flood Con­trol (Or­ange Grove Food Crop Project) aimed at pro­vid­ing wa­ter man­age­ment in­ter­ven­tions to en­able sus­tain­able farm­ing in se­lect­ed project ar­eas, as well as the Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and De­vel­op­ment of Phys­i­cal In­fra­struc­ture at Plum Mi­tan.

 *In ad­di­tion, $2 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed to pur­chase and in­stall two new sluice gates to con­trol the flow of wa­ter at the Plum Mi­tan Project.

The amount spent on projects list­ed was $13 mil­lion, and some of these still re­main in­com­plete.

Com­par­a­tive­ly, in fis­cal 2018, $133.1 mil­lion was spent; in fis­cal 2019, $143.4 mil­lion; and in fis­cal 2020, $223.9 mil­lion. In fis­cal 2021, $5.6 mil­lion was spent, ac­cord­ing to the PSIP 2022 doc­u­ment.

In 2018: Greenvale Park, La Horquetta residents wade through flood water in October 2018.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

100 years since T&T did any ma­jor drainage works

 But de­spite the mil­lions al­lo­cat­ed and spent, it has been about 100 years since the coun­try did any ma­jor drainage works, ac­cord­ing to civ­il en­gi­neer and Pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try Fazir Khan.

 He said an ex­am­ple of the fail­ure to up­grade was the fact that the dry rivers in Port-of-Spain were paved many decades ago and noth­ing has been done since.

 While glob­al warm­ing is a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the flood­ing, Khan claimed that it on­ly ac­counts for ten to 20 per cent of the in­crease, with oth­er fac­tors such as de­vel­op­ment, drainage, leg­isla­tive, ad­min­is­tra­tive, and in­fra­struc­ture is­sues ac­count­ing for the rest.

 Even though there were many stud­ies done, there would not have been a com­mit­ment to im­ple­ment­ing or mak­ing in­vest­ments in­to the in­fra­struc­ture, Khan added. "This is not just to­day. The de­vel­op­ment wasn’t com­men­su­rate with the de­vel­op­ment of the sys­tems and the in­fra­struc­ture wasn’t com­men­su­rate with the de­vel­op­ment of the land and the in­crease in pop­u­la­tion and so forth."

Khan lament­ed that while mil­lions have been spent on flood mit­i­ga­tion stud­ies by suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments, there has been min­i­mal im­ple­men­ta­tion.

 “There are many stud­ies done by many dif­fer­ent peo­ple and I think the Gov­ern­ment needs to re­view all these doc­u­ments, and get se­ri­ous about an im­ple­men­ta­tion plan. The cap­i­tal in­vest­ment would be sig­nif­i­cant, but it’s not some­thing we can fix in a very short time, but we have to have a work­ing plan mov­ing for­ward,” he said.

 Flood/drainage stud­ies con­duct­ed by gov­ern­ments be­tween 2012 and ear­ly 2019 cost $66 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to en­gi­neer De­oroop Temal, chair­man of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Land and Phys­i­cal In­fra­struc­ture on an In­quiry in­to Flood Al­le­vi­a­tion and Con­trol Mea­sures for Ma­jor Riv­er Basins and Drainage Catch­ments in T&T.

 Among the stud­ies con­duct­ed were the North Oropouche Riv­er Basin Study by the IBI Group in 2008; the Fea­si­bil­i­ty Stud­ies and De­tailed De­sign for Or­toire Riv­er Basin Drainage Study by Lee Young and Part­ners in 2009; the Ca­roni Riv­er Basin Study by Roy­al Haskon­ing Caribbean in 2011; the Ca­paro Riv­er Basin Study by Roy­al Haskon­ing OHV/Haskon­ing Caribbean in 2012; as well as the Fea­si­bil­i­ty Stud­ies and De­tailed De­sign Con­sul­tan­cy Ser­vices for South Oropouche Riv­er Basin done by Roy­al Haskon­ing DHV/Haskon­ing Caribbean in 2012.

 The Sun­day Guardian was not able to get ac­cess to these stud­ies, how­ev­er.

Last week, busi­ness­man Is­han Ish­mael called on the Min­istry of Works to dis­close a se­ries of of­fi­cial re­ports on flood­ing in the Bam­boo, and he has in­struct­ed his lawyer to make a re­quest un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act for the in­for­ma­tion.

In 2012: Flooding in Diego Martin in August 2012.

TRINIDAD GUARDIAN

3 years af­ter Sinanan's claim, ques­tions about Govt's op­er­a­tional plan and its ef­fec­tive­ness

In 2019, when an­nounc­ing an­oth­er flood study, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan ad­mit­ted that the State had spent large sums of mon­ey on drainage plans and stud­ies.

 “We spend a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey do­ing stud­ies and we nev­er im­ple­ment any­thing. What we are try­ing to do now is take all these stud­ies, cre­ate one na­tion­al study and cre­ate an op­er­a­tional plan go­ing for­ward…Every year we just keep go­ing out there and hand­ing out cheques and we just can’t con­tin­ue like that,” Sinanan said in 2019.

Three years lat­er, there are ques­tions about the op­er­a­tional plan that Sinanan spoke about and its ef­fec­tive­ness.

The Na­tion­al Drainage Plan

In 2020, the De­vel­op­ment Bank for Latin Amer­i­ca (CAF), as part of the T&T Gov­ern­ment’s at­tempt to pre­pare a na­tion­al drainage plan, se­lect­ed Dutch ur­ban de­vel­op­ment con­sul­tan­cy and en­gi­neer­ing bu­reau Wit­teveen+Bos, as well as lo­cal part­ners Trin­to­plan and Eco­engi­neer­ing to pre­pare a fi­nal de­sign of mea­sures against flood­ing.

 Ac­cord­ing to Wit­teveen+Bos’ web­site, the project start­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2021.

Wit­teveen+Bos said that a strate­gic drainage plan, an eco­nom­ic analy­sis, as well as a set of short-term and long-term mea­sures for each riv­er basin present in the plan were com­plet­ed by Au­gust 2021.

 In 2022, ac­cord­ing to the dutch en­gi­neer­ing con­sul­tan­cy bu­reau, they were ex­pect­ed to make de­signs for drainage mea­sures that could be “ap­plied im­me­di­ate­ly”.

 “These are im­prov­ing em­bank­ments, up­grad­ing drains and a pump­ing sta­tion; dredg­ing, hy­dro­log­i­cal check; and es­tab­lish­ing a frame of ref­er­ence for more de­tailed sur­veys and stud­ies.

 “The im­ple­men­ta­tion of these mea­sures is the first step to­wards an im­proved drainage sys­tem, but short and medi­um-term mea­sures are al­so need­ed to lim­it the con­se­quences of flood­ing,” the dutch com­pa­ny said.

 Ear­li­er this week, the Sun­day Guardian wrote the com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment of Wit­teveen+Bos seek­ing fur­ther up­dates about the project.

How­ev­er, this was their re­sponse: “Thank you for reach­ing out to us, we ap­pre­ci­ate the op­por­tu­ni­ty. In this case, how­ev­er, we have to re­fer you to the T&T Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, through the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary for more in­for­ma­tion.”

 On Mon­day, the Sun­day Guardian spoke with Sinanan, seek­ing an up­date about the na­tion­al drainage plan.

 He said he ad­dressed the sub­ject ear­li­er in the day at a press con­fer­ence.

 We asked him if the five-year time­line that he gave in May 2020 for the na­tion­al drainage pro­gramme to pos­si­bly erad­i­cate the fi­nan­cial bur­den of flood­ing was still achiev­able.

 “Well, it’s an on­go­ing pro­gramme that we have start­ed and as weath­er pat­terns change, we will keep up­grad­ing the pro­gramme. So, yes. Things are on the way,” he said.

 At Mon­day's press con­fer­ence, Sinanan said that the plan was on­go­ing.

“Our main plan is to move this wa­ter...once it gets in­to the ma­jor wa­ter course and so, how we move the wa­ter out. Yes, there’s an el­e­ment with Town and Coun­try, with the lo­cal gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties and so, to make sure that the lo­calised sur­face wa­ter and the in­fra­struc­ture for that are im­proved to a cer­tain code and a cer­tain stan­dard,” he said.

 In June 2020, the De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca (CAF) re­quest­ed bids for a con­sul­tan­cy ser­vice to pre­pare the fi­nal de­sign of im­me­di­ate mea­sures for flood con­trol and a drainage ac­tion plan in T&T.

 The bid, ac­cord­ing to CAF, was put out at the re­quest of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, with the An­dean De­vel­op­ment Bank fi­nanc­ing the con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices at an ex­pect­ed cost of US$450,000.

 In the bid, a de­tailed work plan for every ma­jor riv­er basin in Trinidad to mit­i­gate flood­ing was out­lined.

 No ap­prox­i­mate costs were giv­en.

 *Ac­cord­ing to the bid re­quest, the Ca­roni Riv­er Basin re­quired em­bank­ments to pro­tect the crit­i­cal flood­ed towns, a swamp in­let reg­u­la­tor, dredg­ing of the es­tu­ary, an up­grade of re­main­ing pump sites in the catch­ment, de­ten­tion dams which have the most flood re­duc­tion im­pact with the least land ac­qui­si­tion, im­prove­ment works on the Mal­ick Riv­er, as well as silt traps in rec­om­mend­ed ar­eas.

*The North Oropouche Riv­er Basin re­quired an up­grade of the drainage sys­tem in the vicin­i­ty of Gen­da Road, an up­grade of the chan­nel from Shiv­an Road to the riv­er out­let, chan­nel im­prove­ment works to the trib­u­tary to Guaico Riv­er, an up­grade to the Bam­boo riv­er chan­nel, up­per wa­ter­shed man­age­ment/stormwa­ter man­age­ment of Bam­boo riv­er, as well as the re­place­ment of cross­ings and cul­verts where chan­nel up­grades were un­der­tak­en.

*The South Oropouche Riv­er Basin re­quired im­prove­ment works on the Coara Riv­er and as­so­ci­at­ed ac­cess, em­bank­ment re­con­struc­tion works on new cut chan­nels and trib­u­taries, and a flex­i­ble flood bar­ri­er sys­tem where fea­si­ble.

*And the Or­toire Riv­er Basin re­quired a flex­i­ble flood bar­ri­er sys­tem and a re­place­ment of un­der­per­form­ing struc­tures, such as cul­verts and bridges.

In 2018: Ravi Kalpoo, left, of Kalpoo Tours, rescues residents at Seunarine Street, Kelly Village, in October 2018.

ANISTO ALVES

Re­peat­ed rec­om­men­da­tions by ex­perts

 Over the past week, the Sun­day Guardian’s re­search of avail­able stud­ies found that most of the is­sues that like­ly cause or ex­ac­er­bate flood­ing have been iden­ti­fied, with many rec­om­men­da­tions re­peat­ed in the stud­ies. Most of them have not been im­ple­ment­ed.

In June 2020, the 10th Re­port of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Land and Phys­i­cal In­fra­struc­ture on an In­quiry in­to Flood Al­le­vi­a­tion and Con­trol Mea­sures for Ma­jor Riv­er Basins and Drainage Catch­ments in Trinidad and To­ba­go Sub­ject­ed to Ma­jor Flood­ing over the Past Few Years was laid in Par­lia­ment.

 Among its more than one hun­dred find­ings, the re­port found that the Plan­ning and Fa­cil­i­ta­tion of De­vel­op­ment Act do not suf­fi­cient­ly treat flood­ing; Flood Man­age­ment leg­is­la­tion needs to in­clude high penal­ties for breach­es and ad­e­quate re­sources for en­force­ment; Drainage in­fra­struc­ture in T&T is gen­er­al­ly aged and is not sized to ac­com­mo­date cur­rent rain­fall pat­terns.

Al­so, fre­quent sil­ta­tion is oc­cur­ring be­cause of poor land use prac­tices; the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port re­ceived in­suf­fi­cient fund­ing in fis­cal 2019 to up­grade and re­place pumps and gates; There is a need to treat with de­for­esta­tion giv­en that it leads to soil ero­sion.

In ad­di­tion, de­vel­op­ers en­gage in de­vel­op­ments with lit­tle in­spec­tion by the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions; and ac­tiv­i­ties such as il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, en­croach­ment of riv­er re­serves, back­fill­ing and il­le­gal di­ver­sion of wa­ter­cours­es are chal­lenges.

 In the sum­ma­ry of the re­port’s rec­om­men­da­tions, it was pro­posed that first­ly, a com­pre­hen­sive flood man­age­ment act to in­cor­po­rate all the var­i­ous re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for flood man­age­ment should be en­act­ed. And sec­ond­ly, ad­e­quate fund­ing should be al­lo­cat­ed un­der the PSIP for the up­grade of ex­ist­ing drainage pumps and gates and that bud­get cuts should not be made from this pri­or­i­ty item.

*In 2019, the Unit­ed Na­tions Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC) pub­lished an eco­nom­ic analy­sis of flood­ing in the Caribbean.

 The re­port ref­er­enced find­ings of gov­ern­ment-com­mis­sioned stud­ies not avail­able to the pub­lic.

 “Flood­ing as oth­er types of hy­dro-me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal events have been ex­ac­er­bat­ed by de­vel­op­men­tal change and ur­ban­i­sa­tion pat­terns. Loss of pro­tec­tive veg­e­ta­tion caused by bush­fires, in­dis­crim­i­nate clear­ing, and degra­da­tion of forests for hous­ing and ur­ban de­vel­op­ment are key dri­vers. Com­bined with agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices, such as cul­ti­va­tion on steep slopes, slash and burn, and poor wa­ter­shed man­age­ment.

 “These all con­tribute to soil ero­sion and in­creased sed­i­ment yields in rivers and canals that cause changes in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the to­tal basin runoff over peak flows and base­flows,” the re­port found.

 The ECLAC re­port said the de­vel­op­ment of new ur­ban and agri­cul­tur­al ar­eas has of­ten not been ac­com­pa­nied by the ex­pan­sion of ap­pro­pri­ate in­fra­struc­ture, es­pe­cial­ly drainage sys­tems.

 “More­over, the ur­ban de­vel­op­ment has pro­gres­sive­ly sprawled north­wards and up­s­lope in­to sev­er­al val­leys in the south­ern flank of the North­ern Range, ar­eas con­sid­ered crit­i­cal for soil and wa­ter con­ser­va­tion,” it said.

*In March 2001, a na­tion­al re­port on In­te­grat­ing the Man­age­ment of Wa­ter­sheds and Coastal Ar­eas in Trinidad and To­ba­go by the Wa­ter Re­sources Agency found that while a size­able sec­tor of T&T’s econ­o­my de­pends on in­come gen­er­at­ed by the agri­cul­tur­al and quar­ry­ing sec­tors, the prac­tices have re­sult­ed in the wide-scale degra­da­tion of many wa­ter­sheds with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

 “The gen­er­al con­sen­sus is that the hy­dro­log­i­cal re­sponse of rivers to rain­fall has changed over the years due to such degra­da­tion…High­er sed­i­ment yields led to an in­crease in the cost of drink­ing wa­ter pro­duc­tion and more reg­u­lar main­te­nance of wa­ter treat­ment plants, to­geth­er with in­creased in­ci­dences of flood­ing in ar­eas along the east-west cor­ri­dor and the Ca­roni Basin.

“The Ca­roni Basin is al­ready un­der threat from poor land use prac­tices, in­clud­ing the de­for­esta­tion of the North­ern Range, which re­sults in peren­ni­al flood­ing in the low­er re­gions of the Basin,” the re­port found.

 The re­port al­so stat­ed that al­le­vi­at­ing flood­ing in the flood plains of the larg­er rivers such as Ca­paro, Ca­roni, South Oropouche, and North Oropouche called for sub­stan­tial cap­i­tal in­vest­ments.

 “There is gen­er­al­ly an in­creas­ing con­cern about an ap­par­ent in­abil­i­ty of the pub­lic au­thor­i­ties to in­sti­tute sat­is­fac­to­ry mea­sures of flood con­trol based on drainage en­gi­neer­ing de­signs,” the na­tion­al re­port by the Wa­ter Re­sources Agency found.

*In March 2003, the Na­tion­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency’s Na­tion­al Flood Con­tin­gency Plan found that prop­er zon­ing sys­tems and the en­force­ment of land-use reg­u­la­tions were crit­i­cal to wa­ter and flood man­age­ment.

 It said that var­i­ous sub-plans ought to be de­vel­oped to min­imise the like­li­hood of flood­ing.

1. The first sub-plan was ero­sion con­trol and runoff re­duc­tion meth­ods.

The pro­posed meth­ods in­clud­ed for­est con­ser­va­tion and re­for­esta­tion, pre­vent­ing/min­imis­ing un­de­sir­able land clear­ing, pro­mot­ing change in agri­cul­tur­al tech­niques, slope sta­bil­i­sa­tion, as well as reg­u­la­tion of post-de­vel­op­ment flaws as per de­sign cri­te­ria and drainage re­quire­ments.

 2. The sec­ond sub-plan in­volved coastal meth­ods.

 The pro­posed meth­ods in­clud­ed beach and wet­land preser­va­tion, sea­wall and dyke con­struc­tion, con­struc­tion of oth­er near-shore and coastal pro­tec­tion mech­a­nisms, wet­land and reef preser­va­tion, as well as mon­i­tor­ing and main­te­nance of near-shore ma­rine ecosys­tem health.

 3. The third sub-plan was to re­duce ve­loc­i­ty flows.

 The pro­posed meth­ods in­clud­ed en­er­gy dis­si­pa­tors in high-ve­loc­i­ty streams e.g de­ten­tion ponds and hy­draulic drops; as well as re­ten­tion sys­tems e.g con­struc­tion and main­te­nance of dams.

 4. The fourth sub-plan was flood con­trol.

 The pro­posed meth­ods in­clud­ed main­te­nance of wa­ter cours­es, sea walls, sluice gates, and dams; ca­pac­i­ty im­prove­ments eg paving, widen­ing, and align­ment of chan­nels; mo­bile pumps for de­pres­sions and low-ly­ing ar­eas; per­ma­nent pumps in crit­i­cal low-ly­ing ar­eas; as well as dykes and em­bank­ments.

Oth­er pro­posed meth­ods were flood-warn­ing sys­tems, pub­lic alert­ing sys­tems, evac­u­a­tion, re­lo­ca­tion of high-risk com­mu­ni­ties, and the de­vel­op­ment of flood haz­ard maps.

We need to act now

Ac­cord­ing to Kegan Far­rick, a lec­tur­er at the Ge­og­ra­phy de­part­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, with the grow­ing threat of glob­al warm­ing, T&T is look­ing at the po­ten­tial of more se­ri­ous floods giv­en pro­jec­tions of in­creased rain­fall and heav­ier rains over pro­longed pe­ri­ods.

 He said that giv­en this pos­si­bil­i­ty, it is im­por­tant that the coun­try man­ages flood­ing fac­tors un­der its con­trol, like mon­i­tor­ing poor or il­le­gal plan­ning.

“There are tons of de­vel­op­ments in a lot of hill­side ar­eas…and moun­tains and hill­sides are nat­ur­al stores of this type of rain­fall, so what you see is when you pave those ar­eas or you change how the wa­ter makes it down to the rivers and streams, you are re­duc­ing the ca­pac­i­ty. It’s like a buffer. Those things will buffer and re­duce how much wa­ter is com­ing down quick­ly.

 “I think there’s lim­it­ed ca­pac­i­ty as well, as with many things…When we are look­ing at en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues, we have all the rules and reg­u­la­tions in place, but it’s the en­force­ment and the hu­man pow­er to be able to go out and mon­i­tor de­vel­op­ment to en­sure it’s be­ing done the cor­rect way,” the for­mer head of UWI’s ge­og­ra­phy de­part­ment said.

 In Sep­tem­ber 2020, for­mer Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said land de­vel­op­ers whose projects wors­en flood­ing and de­stroy nat­ur­al habits could face the law.

“As Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty and the Town and Coun­ty Plan­ning Di­vi­sion, un­der my re­mit, are in­ves­ti­gat­ing a num­ber of land de­vel­op­ments be­ing un­der­tak­en in var­i­ous parts of the coun­try, to guar­an­tee that the re­spon­si­ble de­vel­op­ers have the oblig­a­tory ap­provals and are meet­ing the nec­es­sary le­gal re­quire­ments.

“If it is dis­cov­ered that none of the above has been met, then all ac­tions avail­able to the Min­istry un­der the law will be im­ple­ment­ed to ei­ther stop the de­vel­op­ments or to en­sure that the prop­er mea­sures are be­ing un­der­tak­en to safe­guard the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she said in 2020.

In 2021, the for­mer Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter claimed, once again, that en­vi­ron­men­tal laws would be in­creas­ing­ly en­forced to help man­age flood­ing.

She said there must be a bal­ance be­tween prop­er use of the en­vi­ron­ment and ex­pand­ing de­vel­op­ment.

“Leg­is­la­tion ex­ists to reg­u­late use and care of our en­vi­ron­ment and re­in­force­ment will be en­hanced to deal with flood­ing is­sues. Some of the reg­u­la­tions that will be­gin to be re­in­forced through the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) in­clude the Wa­ter Pol­lu­tion Rules, 2019 and the Wa­ter Pol­lu­tion (Fees) Reg­u­la­tions, 2019, the Waste Man­age­ment Rules, 2021 and the Waste Man­age­ment (Fees) Reg­u­la­tions, 2021,” she said.

From en­forc­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal laws, Far­rick said it was al­so im­por­tant that homes and com­mu­ni­ties are adapt­ed to deal with the changes as­so­ci­at­ed with glob­al warm­ing.

Ex­am­ples of phys­i­cal adap­ta­tions, he said, were im­prov­ing drainage sys­tems, con­struct­ing homes on stilts, or mak­ing ad­just­ments to the lo­ca­tions of ma­jor road­ways.

 “We have sev­er­al dif­fer­ent types of so­lu­tions that we can use. Right now, what’s be­com­ing pop­u­lar are these na­ture-based so­lu­tions where we build with na­ture and we utilise some of the nat­ur­al struc­tures in place. So try­ing to re­store wet­lands, for in­stance, be­cause wet­lands help with flood­ing. They store and re­tain a lot of wa­ter…We’ve lost a lot of those wet­land ar­eas in the coun­try us­ing things like more per­me­able pave­ments.

 “We can make the cor­rect adap­ta­tions. So if we have the cor­rect plan­ning and prop­er gov­er­nance, for in­stance, then we can put all the things in place to re­duce these sorts of im­pacts long term,” he said.