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Sunday, February 16, 2025

Facelift for Macqueripe Beach, repairs to be completed by Easter

by

Gail Alexander
1432 days ago
20210316
Macqueripe beach

Macqueripe beach

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

A plan of ac­tion to ad­dress is­sues at Mac­queripe Beach, in­clud­ing rail­ings and steps, be­gan yes­ter­day and will be com­plet­ed by East­er week­end. Plan­ning Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is yes­ter­day de­tailed the re­pairs and time­line in re­sponse to ques­tions raised in the Sen­ate by UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark’ about the re­cent clo­sure of the fa­cil­i­ty.

“These works were orig­i­nal­ly in­tend­ed to com­mence dur­ing the East­er week­end. How­ev­er, due to a re­cent ar­ti­cle high­light­ing the dis­re­pair of cer­tain ar­eas of the fa­cil­i­ty and a sub­se­quent vis­it by the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty to the Mac­queripe Beach fa­cil­i­ty, it was de­cid­ed that the work would ad­vance, and it is in­tend­ed to be com­plet­ed by East­er week­end,” she said.

In an ear­li­er state­ment yes­ter­day, Robin­son-Reg­is said the scope of works is be­ing craft­ed and con­trac­tors are be­ing pro­cured to car­ry out the nec­es­sary works as soon as pos­si­ble.

Sev­er­al meet­ings have been held in­ter­nal­ly and ex­ter­nal­ly in­volv­ing CDA’s Board to de­vel­op a long term plan. In that state­ment, Robin­son-Reg­is said she was aware of the is­sues to re­turn the beach to nor­mal­cy and had asked for both a long term so­lu­tion and short term one.

“With­in the last six years work was done on the Mac­queripe Beach fa­cil­i­ty which we ad­mit now needs re­fur­bish­ment,” Robin­son-Reg­is said in that state­ment.

In the Sen­ate, she said CDA’s Board and man­age­ment de­vel­oped a com­pre­hen­sive re­pair pro­gramme for Mac­queripe Beach which in­clud­ed short and long term work in­volv­ing the fol­low­ing:

Short Term Work

• Clear­ing of de­bris and prun­ing of trees.

• Curbs in the park­ing area are be­ing paint­ed. Car park spots will be clear­ly de­mar­cat­ed in yel­low.

• Rail­ings are be­ing tem­porar­i­ly re­paired un­til they can be re­moved and re­done us­ing ca­ble wire.

• Steps have been pres­sure washed. The life­guard booth will be paint­ed and the steps will be re­paired. Tim­ber has been pur­chased for this.

Long Term Work

• CDA in­tends to re­pair rails through­out the perime­ter of the area by in­stalling con­crete PVC bol­lards and re­mov­ing the dam­aged tim­ber rail­ings that have not with­held the con­stant sea blast and pub­lic use.

• A dai­ly paid crew is sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for clean­ing Mac­queripe. The rough ter­raz­zo on the steps gets slip­pery when wet and there­fore a white lime treat­ment is usu­al­ly done, along with pres­sure wash­ing. These treat­ments need to be done more of­ten. It is dif­fi­cult to do these treat­ments reg­u­lar­ly as there’s a wa­ter prob­lem in the area. It was sug­gest­ed that to fur­ther cur­tail the im­pact of the wa­ter is­sues, tanks can be in­stalled to fa­cil­i­tate reg­u­lar pow­er wash­ing and white lime treat­ments.

• Rain and spring wa­ter seep­age have cre­at­ed a leak at the base of the stone re­tain­ing wall that flows on­to the plat­form. This cre­at­ed a slip­page prob­lem. To al­le­vi­ate this, a con­crete drain will be con­struct­ed to di­vert the wa­ter to an ex­ist­ing earth­en drain that will drain in­to the sea.

Sink­hole so­lu­tion

Robin­son Reg­is said a sink­hole at the fa­cil­i­ty had been an is­sue for quite some time.

“The Works Min­istry’s Coastal Pro­tec­tion Unit has vis­it­ed the sink­hole on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions and is in process of find­ing a so­lu­tion,” she said.

Af­ter sev­er­al con­sul­ta­tions, it was sug­gest­ed that a so­lu­tion used in oth­er ar­eas of Trinidad be tried. It in­volves fill­ing the void with stones and con­crete and at the same time plac­ing rocks to the front of the sea wall act­ing as a bar­ri­er to ab­sorb im­pact from the sea and waves. Ude­COTT utilised a sim­i­lar tech­nique at seafront lo­ca­tions such as the north coast. Some­thing sim­i­lar was al­so done in Man­zanil­la and Mos­qui­to Creek.

On con­cerns by the Mac­queripe Ear­ly Morn­ing Swim­mers As­so­ci­a­tion (MEM­SA), Robin­son-Reg­is said work­ers will be con­tact­ed for as­sis­tance with the ap­pro­pri­ate ma­chin­ery and per­son­nel where nec­es­sary to re­move burnt bam­boo clus­ters that cause clear­ing is­sues in the area. Ma­chin­ery will al­so be used to widen the verges by re­mov­ing hang­ing bam­boo that pos­es a threat to cars and pedes­tri­ans.

The CDA Es­tate Po­lice has tak­en steps to al­le­vi­ate dou­ble and im­prop­er park­ing on the road­way in Tuck­er Val­ley by con­duct­ing reg­u­lar joint pa­trols with the TTPS. The po­lice have ad­vised that there is to be no park­ing on the verges as it is dan­ger­ous be­cause of the num­ber of per­sons tra­vers­ing the road­way. The Fa­cil­i­ties De­part­ment has be­gun cre­at­ing ad­di­tion­al park­ing ar­eas for the pub­lic close to the heav­i­ly traf­ficked sites so as not to cre­ate a park­ing prob­lem.


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