The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) re­ceived a drainage de­sign rec­om­men­da­tion from an ex­ter­nal com­pa­ny just one day be­fore the Oc­to­ber 19 floods hit Green­vale Park, La Hor­quet­ta.

On Fri­day, HDC chair­man New­man George said in No­vem­ber 2017, the HDC had tried to find a so­lu­tion to the po­ten­tial flood­ing at Green­vale. He con­firmed the com­pa­ny knew the area had the po­ten­tial to flood and was look­ing for so­lu­tions since he took of­fice in 2015.

In re­sponse to ques­tions from the Sun­day Guardian on Fri­day, George said the HDC was try­ing to make up­grades to the site to avoid flood­ing in fu­ture.

“We knew there was a po­ten­tial prob­lem there when I went in as board chair­man in 2015,” George said.

“In 2017 I start­ed to look at so­lu­tions to this prob­lem, in Ju­ly 2017 we sent out pro­pos­als ask­ing in­vi­ta­tions to ten­der for pro­vi­sion of drainage de­sign con­sul­tan­cy for HDC Green­vale Park.”

George said the con­tract was grant­ed to Al­pha En­gi­neer­ing on No­vem­ber 6, 2017, to pro­vide drainage de­sign con­sul­tan­cy. Al­pha’s rec­om­men­da­tions were sent to HDC on Oc­to­ber 18, the day be­fore the floods.

“Al­pha did a drainage de­sign and a hy­dro­log­i­cal sur­vey of the area and they made cer­tain rec­om­men­da­tions about what is to be done to al­le­vi­ate the flood­ing,” George said.

He said the HDC is now hope­ful those rec­om­men­da­tions will be im­ple­ment­ed in ear­ly 2019, well be­fore the start of the next rainy sea­son.

But George could not say how much those rec­om­men­da­tions would cost the HDC.

“We are now in the process of look­ing at the rec­om­men­da­tions to have it de­signed and cost­ed,” he said.

He said the HDC has been try­ing to make Green­vale live­able again by as­sist­ing res­i­dents with re­pair works to their homes and re­pair­ing dam­age done to elec­tri­cal in­fra­struc­ture dur­ing the re­cent flood­ing.

On Fri­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so pre­sent­ed a 2010 re­port by Trin­i­ty Hous­ing Ltd which talked about mit­i­gat­ing the flood­ing in the area. Row­ley said the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment did noth­ing with the in­for­ma­tion.

The con­tracts

Con­struc­tion of the Green­vale units was un­der­tak­en by two con­trac­tors—Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons and Trin­i­ty Hous­ing—at a to­tal cost of $234 mil­lion.

When the con­tracts were fi­nalised in 2015, the Green­vale de­vel­op­ment had a cost over­run of $80 mil­lion, bring­ing the to­tal con­tract sum paid to $314 mil­lion.

The con­tracts were award­ed in May, 2008 at the rate of $315 per square foot to both con­trac­tors. At an HDC Ten­ders’ Com­mit­tee meet­ing on Sep­tem­ber 17, 2008, the rate was in­creased to $379.24 per square foot based on in­creas­es to the price of ma­te­ri­als, an in­ter­nal as­sess­ment and a quan­ti­ty sur­vey­or as­sess­ment and cor­rec­tions to the prices of some items on the con­tract.

The com­mit­tee de­cid­ed then to pay Ramhit $137 mil­lion for the con­struc­tion of 416 hous­es in Green­vale. The project was done in two phas­es—Phase 1 was the con­struc­tion of 38 du­plex units, 126 sin­gle fam­i­ly units, eight two-storey bun­ga­lows, 14 two-storey res­i­den­tial units and eight two-storey res­i­den­tial-com­mer­i­cal units. Phase 2 was the con­struc­tion of 44 du­plex units, 108 sin­gle fam­i­ly units, 33 two-storey bun­ga­lows and six two-storey res­i­den­tial/com­mer­cial unit.

But Ramhit was un­able to build 41 of the units be­cause squat­ters were oc­cu­py­ing the land.

At that same meet­ing, af­ter sim­i­lar ad­just­ments were made to a con­tract award­ed to Trin­i­ty in May 2008, the HDC agreed to pay Trin­i­ty $97 mil­lion to con­struct 239 hous­ing units.

From the 557 units that were built, 348 of those were flat hous­es.

Both projects had been start­ed in May, 2008 and were ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed with­in 24 months.

Ac­cord­ing to the sum­ma­ry sta­tis­tics of Ramhit’s con­tract for the Green­vale project, the com­ple­tion date was June, 2015. But the cost

for the 416 hous­ing units had bal­looned from its orig­i­nal $137 mil­lion to over $175 mil­lion. From that in­crease, $17 mil­lion was iden­ti­fied as hav­ing been used for vari­a­tions in in­fra­struc­ture.

In the sum­ma­ry sta­tis­tics of Trin­i­ty’s con­tract, the com­ple­tion date was al­so June, 2015 and their price for con­struc­tion of 239 hous­ing units had in­creased from $97 mil­lion to over $139 mil­lion. Trin­i­ty cit­ed a $22 mil­lion vari­a­tion in the con­tract val­ue for in­fra­struc­ture works done on the site.

Con­struc­tion with­out plans, ap­provals

At an HDC Ten­der’s Com­mit­tee meet­ing on Sep­tem­ber 17, 2008, land co­or­di­na­tor Deb­o­rah Cheesman raised sev­er­al is­sues about Green­vale’s con­struc­tion, which had al­ready start­ed.

The com­mit­tee, in its min­utes, not­ed that Cheesman re­port­ed she had not seen plans for the de­vel­op­ment al­though both in­fra­struc­ture and build­ings were al­ready un­der­way.

Cheesman raised is­sues about the de­vel­op­ment plans and statu­to­ry ap­provals for the project, not­ing that the de­sign and in­fra­struc­ture plan for many of the de­vel­op­ments had not been sub­mit­ted to the HDC for sign-off.

She al­so said ar­bi­trary changes had been made dur­ing the con­struc­tion on sites. She al­so not­ed that where in­de­pen­dent con­sul­tants were hired to pre­pare de­signs for de­vel­op­ments, the de­signs were be­ing done with lit­tle or no over­sight by HDC project man­agers.

Cheesman not­ed too that the HDC would be un­able to al­lo­cate hous­es to any ben­e­fi­cia­ries be­cause there were no statu­to­ry ap­provals for the de­vel­op­ments.

No steps for flood mit­i­ga­tion

A for­mer se­nior project man­ag­er who worked on the Green­vale Park de­vel­op­ment told the Sun­day Guardian the cost of vari­ances for in­fra­struc­tur­al work was high be­cause no mit­i­ga­tion work against flood­ing in the area was done be­fore con­struc­tion start­ed.

In 2009, af­ter the hous­es were al­most all com­plet­ed, heavy rain­fall sent flood­wa­ters gush­ing in­to the de­vel­op­ment. Flood­wa­ters reached up to four feet high in some of the un­fin­ished hous­es, caus­ing tiles in many of the hous­es to fall off the walls, the source, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said.

“Ini­tial­ly there were no mit­i­gat­ing strate­gies be­cause, in my opin­ion, the de­signs were in­com­plete. If they had a com­plete de­sign they would have tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the flow in­to the riv­er, they would have raised the site, but they just went and start­ed build­ing, then af­ter the flood they came to put re­ten­tion ponds,” the source said.

In 2011, out­flow pumps were in­stalled around the de­vel­op­ment and a de­ci­sion was tak­en to build em­bank­ments around the de­vel­op­ment. But once again, is­sues with squat­ters put a dent in those plans.

“The next strat­e­gy was to put em­bank­ments - to em­bank the en­tire site, that was a part of their pre­vi­ous plan which we fol­lowed through be­cause of the de­sign con­sul­tants - but the em­bank­ment couldn’t be com­plet­ed on one side be­cause of the squat­ters on one side of the de­vel­op­ment and we had to go to Land Set­tle­ment Agency to get that ap­proval,” the source said.

Un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2014, then hous­ing min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal be­gan al­lo­cat­ing hous­es in the de­vel­op­ment to HDC ap­pli­cants.

Jear­lean: Project

nev­er stopped

While Green­vale res­i­dents are con­tin­u­ing to deal with their los­es from the re­cent flood­ing dev­as­ta­tion, the po­lit­i­cal blame game is in full swing with Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and Plan­ning Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is both point­ing fin­gers at the oth­er for in­fra­struc­tur­al woes which ul­ti­mate­ly led to the prob­lem now be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced at the hous­ing de­vel­op­ment.

Robin­son-Reg­is told CNC3 that Town and Coun­try ap­provals were sought and de­nied from 2000 to 2014 for con­struc­tion on the site. She said the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment had halt­ed the Green­vale project be­cause of flood­ing is­sues.

But Jear­lean John, who was the HDC’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor from 2009 to 2016, said the project was nev­er halt­ed.

“The project was nev­er halt­ed, of­fi­cial­ly or oth­er­wise. Kind­ly bear in mind if a project is to be halt­ed, that will be a de­ci­sion of the HDC board. Dur­ing my tenure there was no such de­ci­sion,” John wrote via What­sapp.

Asked how much of the Green­vale de­vel­op­ment was com­plet­ed when she took up of­fice, John wrote, “All of the hous­es were al­ready com­plet­ed when I was ap­point­ed MD.”

When the Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed Mooni­lal, he blamed the flood­ing on fail­ure to de­silt the wa­ter re­ten­tion ponds and main­tain the pumps for the de­vel­op­ment.

“Those are meant to be cleaned and de-silt­ed every year, when we went in­to of­fice over $150 mil­lion had been spent al­ready on that project, we knew that site was poor be­cause of the drainage is­sues and be­cause they had di­vert­ed the nat­ur­al course of the riv­er, but we did what we could to re­ha­bil­i­tate the site,” Mooni­lal said.

Mooni­lal said dur­ing his tenure the ponds and pumps were main­tained reg­u­lar­ly, not­ing there was no flood­ing on the site un­til 2017.

“For three years now they have not done any clean­ing or drainage works, so it seems that they are not con­cerned with pre­vent­ing de­struc­tion in peo­ple’s homes,” he said.