Sto­ries by RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

De­bris from the Mos­qui­to Creek High­way con­struc­tion works has blocked es­tu­ar­ies of the South Oropouche Drainage basin, af­fect­ing birds, plants and ma­rine life.

Guardian Me­dia took a tour of the Godineau swamp sit­u­at­ed along­side the South Trunk Road, near Mos­qui­to Creek on Fri­day and saw a bird trapped in the de­bris near the clogged Mos­qui­to Creek Riv­er.

Chunks of con­crete, steel rods, grav­el and mat­ting from the project site, lit­tered the riv­er. This pre­vent­ed the flow of wa­ter. 

The swamp is the breed­ing ground for 29 species of fish and nu­mer­ous species of crus­tacean crabs, oys­ters, mam­mals, ro­dents, rep­tiles, am­phib­ians and birds.

The man­groves act as a buffer be­tween the sea and the land and is a feed­ing ground for shrimp and oth­er com­mer­cial sea or­gan­isms that feed on the nu­tri­ents de­posit­ed at the mouth of the riv­er.

But since the block­age, the Mos­qui­to Creek Riv­er has be­come nar­row and no longer flows freely in­to the sea.

Pres­i­dent of the South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion Group Ed­ward Mood­ie said the riv­er mouth near the bridge is 80 feet wide. How­ev­er, when you trek a quar­ter mile down the riv­er, it has nar­rowed to less than two feet. 

Stand­ing in­side the riv­er, Mood­ie said, “With the con­struc­tion of the high­way, the con­trac­tor pushed the waste ma­te­r­i­al in­to the riv­er. Look at what they have done. We need the Min­istry of Works to act now and clear this riv­er so that the flood­ing in­land can flow freely and drain the Oropouche Basin.”

He ex­plained that six months ago, he spoke to of­fi­cials from the Drainage Di­vi­sion and sup­plied video footage of the clogged riv­er.

“We are will­ing to take the of­fi­cials down the riv­er so they can see what is hap­pen­ing. This is af­fect­ing the es­tu­ary. Fish­es from the sea come in­to the brack­ish wa­ter of the man­grove and re­pro­duce. The fin­ger­lings stay here but with the riv­er be­ing clogged, the fish­es can no longer go up the riv­er and spawn be­cause the riv­er does not ex­ist any­more. This will im­pact neg­a­tive­ly on the fish­eries in the sea and will lead to a de­ple­tion of fish­es in the ocean,” Mood­ie said. 

Pres­i­dent of the Wood­land Flood Ac­tion group said his com­mu­ni­ty is se­ri­ous­ly af­fect­ed by the peren­ni­al flood­ing. How­ev­er, he said if the wa­ter starts to flow once again from the Mos­qui­to Creek Riv­er and two oth­er es­tu­ar­ies, then the com­mu­ni­ty could drain faster fol­low­ing heavy rains.

“The rainy sea­son is ex­pect­ed to get worse and we are brac­ing for more floods. If they can clean these es­tu­ar­ies back to the cre­ma­tion site bridge which is al­ready blocked, we can get rid of 30 per cent of the flood­ing in our com­mu­ni­ty,” Singh said.

He said while they were grate­ful that the Min­istry of Works had se­cured two pumps for the area, they want­ed it to be in­stalled as soon as pos­si­ble.

“We un­der­stand in some ar­eas they had to block the wa­ter­cours­es to do the high­way works but now that the works were com­plet­ed, they need to clear back these clogged wa­ter­cours­es,” Singh said.

He called on the Min­istry to bring in am­phib­ian equip­ment to clear the wa­ter­cours­es.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter of Works Ro­han Sinanan said he will con­tact his team from the Drainage Di­vi­sion to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter and see what can be done.