Derek Achong

One hun­dred and four res­i­dents of Green­vale Park Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment in La Hor­quet­ta, who were dev­as­tat­ed by se­vere flood­ing in Oc­to­ber last year, have filed their law­suit against the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC). 

In the class-ac­tion claim, filed in the Port-of-Spain High Court on Tues­day af­ter­noon, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the group al­leged that the HDC was guilty of neg­li­gence, mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion, breach of con­tract and nui­sance in con­struct­ing and man­ag­ing the de­vel­op­ment. 

Ac­cord­ing to their state­ment of case, the HDC and its pre­de­ces­sor the Na­tion­al Hous­ing Au­thor­i­ty (NHA) knew that the area, lo­cat­ed near to the bank of the Ca­roni Riv­er, had a propen­si­ty to flood when it ac­quired the land from a pri­vate de­vel­op­er for $12 mil­lion in 2003. 

Their at­tor­ney re­ferred to the for­mer de­vel­op­er’s ap­pli­ca­tion for ap­proval from the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion (TCPD) from 2000, which was de­nied due to the close prox­im­i­ty to the ma­jor wa­ter­course. 

They claimed that when the HDC at­tempt­ed to ob­tain a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) in 2003, it was told that it had to con­duct an en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact as­sess­ment to specif­i­cal­ly ad­dress the risk of flood­ing.  

Af­ter com­plet­ing the process, the HDC ap­plied for an­oth­er CEC and as­sured the EMA that its fi­nal drainage plans will be ap­proved by the Drainage Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture. 

Be­tween 2006 and 2009, the HDC made two ap­pli­ca­tions for ap­proval from the TCPD which were sim­i­lar­ly re­fused as with the ap­pli­ca­tion made by the for­mer de­vel­op­er of the land. 

The HDC on­ly sought to con­sult with the Drainage Di­vi­sion af­ter the project was com­plet­ed in 2011 and the dis­cus­sion be­tween the par­ties had not been con­clud­ed when the flood­ing took place, last year. 

In ad­di­tion to ig­nor­ing the is­sues raised by the Gov­ern­ment agen­cies when it went ahead with the de­vel­op­ment, the home­own­ers are al­so claim­ing that the HDC was neg­li­gent in fail­ing to prop­er­ly de­vel­op and main­tain the area’s drainage sys­tem. 

They claimed that the drains and re­ten­tion ponds were not prop­er­ly sized and were not dredged or clear of ob­struc­tions. 

“The de­fen­dant failed to dis­close to any of the claimants that the De­vel­op­ment was in dan­ger of flood­ing or that it did not have ef­fec­tive or ad­e­quate drainage/flood pre­ven­tion sys­tems,” the le­gal doc­u­ments stat­ed. 

The res­i­dents claimed that the HDC breached its con­tract with them and was guilty of mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion by fail­ing to dis­close the flood con­cerns be­fore they took pos­ses­sion of their hous­ing units. 

“In breach of the im­plied terms, the hous­ing units sub­ject to the Deeds and Agree­ments for Sale were not safe, san­i­tary, de­cent, at­trac­tive and/or rea­son­ably fit for hu­man habi­ta­tion,” the doc­u­ments stat­ed. 

In the le­gal doc­u­ments, the res­i­dents’ lawyers sought to de­tail their ex­pe­ri­ences dur­ing the cat­a­stroph­ic flood­ing. 

“Their hous­ing units were in­un­dat­ed with flood-wa­ter, cov­ered with sludge, in­fect­ed by over­flow­ing sewage and in­fest­ed with ver­min,” it stat­ed. 

The res­i­dents’ lawyers went on to de­scribe how some were forced to flee their homes and oth­ers were left trapped for hours be­fore fel­low res­i­dents and emer­gency per­son­nel were able to res­cue them. 

They claimed that many of their clients were still suf­fer­ing from trau­ma and anx­i­ety as they have to con­tin­ue to live in the de­vel­op­ment, which is still prone to flood­ing. 

The res­i­dents are seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for HDC’s al­leged breach­es, their prop­er­ty dam­age, their emo­tion­al trau­ma they suf­fered and the diminu­tion of their prop­er­ty val­ue. 

The res­i­dents are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Gre­go­ry Delzin, Di­anne Mano, Rafiya Karim, Joseph Cowles and Melis­sa Mano.