Gail Alexan­der

With T&T awash in floods from East to South up to yes­ter­day, the Plan­ning Min­istry's Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion is ac­tive­ly re­view­ing its pol­i­cy re­gard­ing hill­side de­vel­op­ment with all rel­e­vant agen­cies.

The re­sponse came yes­ter­day af­ter Guardian Me­dia sent queries to Plan­ning Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son Reg­is on Mon­day re­gard­ing whether there will be any change to laws to pre­vent fur­ther hill­side and hill­top en­croach­ments by de­vel­op­ers .

This is be­ing cit­ed as among key fac­tors caus­ing bad flood­ing in the north as well as south .

Res­i­dents of Mar­aval –which ex­pe­ri­enced se­vere flash flood­ing re­cent­ly– sent pic­tures show­ing de­vel­op­ments up the moun­tain­sides and hill­tops along Nigel Av­enue, oth­er Mar­aval lo­ca­tions and al­so in San­ta Cruz.

Pic­tures were sent by Guardian Me­dia to Robin­son- Reg­is. The Op­po­si­tion has al­so dis­played pic­tures of dev­as­tat­ing flood­ing in South in­clud­ing caused by poor main­te­nance of sys­tems.

Yes­ter­day, when Tu­na­puna Main Road turned in­to a rush­ing riv­er of brown wa­ter from end- to- end, mo­torists and res­i­dents point­ed to streets lead­ing from the moun­tain­sides which be­came gush­ing “trib­u­taries” to the Main Road “riv­er” .

They al­so blamed in­dis­crim­i­nate de­vel­op­ment . “We nev­er see Tu­na­puna like this, all the way to Au­zonville Shop­ping Cen­tre un­der­wa­ter,” sev­er­al added.

That sit­u­a­tion prompt­ed UNC Oropouche West MP Dave Tan­coo– whose con­stituen­cy has been sub­merged in re­cent weeks–to say “Tu­na­puna;s ex­pe­ri­ence is what my con­stituents face every time rain falls,"

The re­sponse from Robin­son- Reg­is stat­ed she’s en­sur­ing Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion is “giv­ing at­ten­tion to re­in­forc­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach­es ” to deal with the mat­ters that con­tribute to flood­ing with the var­i­ous agen­cies in the process .

She said, “The onus al­so falls on de­vel­op­ers and cit­i­zens un­der­tak­ing any de­vel­op­ment to abide by the laws and en­sure they op­er­ate in a man­ner that’s not detri­men­tal to the en­vi­ron­ment and oth­ers.“

“The Di­vi­sion and the oth­er part­ner agen­cies in the spa­tial de­vel­op­ment process are se­ri­ous about prop­er spa­tial de­vel­op­ment prac­tices and are re­view­ing and mak­ing the nec­es­sary changes where nec­es­sary to en­sure cit­i­zens’ well-be­ing and safe­ty re­gard­ing phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment in T&T,”

"The Di­vi­sion is ac­tive­ly re­view­ing its pol­i­cy re­gard­ing hill­side de­vel­op­ment with all rel­e­vant agen­cies. The Di­vi­sion is aware de­vel­op­ment hap­pens at var­i­ous heights and along cer­tain types of slopes, how­ev­er the key is how the de­vel­op­ments oc­cur, which are guid­ed by the var­i­ous poli­cies and leg­is­la­tion," she al­so said

There was no word when the re­view will be com­plet­ed.

To be­gin con­struc­tion, the min­istry stat­ed a de­vel­op­er must se­cure ap­provals from the Di­vi­sion for do­ing build­ing/en­gi­neer­ing op­er­a­tions, from WASA, Fire Ser­vice, Works Min­istry’s Drainage Di­vi­sion , the lo­cal cor­po­ra­tion and a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA)

The Min­istry not­ed claus­es in the Town & Coun­try Plan­ning Act and re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions’ law to guide land de­vel­op­ment to mit­i­gate against flood­ing.

It al­so cit­ed the EMA Act, Chap­ter 35:05 of 2000, where leg­is­la­tion con­cern­ing all as­pects of flood­ing is cov­ered by the Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance Rules, 2001.

The Min­istry ad­mit­ted one key “vari­able” that all agen­cies are ad­dress­ing– es­pe­cial­ly with­in re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions– is en­sur­ing there’s enough staff on the ground to mon­i­tor that the work be­ing done match­es ap­provals.