KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While last week­end’s down­pours brought flood­ing to some parts of South Trinidad, many com­mu­ni­ties were spared the dev­as­ta­tion of murky wa­ters in­vad­ing their homes. Still, soaked roads and swollen wet­lands served as a sober­ing re­minder of what po­ten­tial­ly lies ahead as the wet sea­son sets in.

Lo­cal gov­ern­ment crews in Pe­nal and Ma­yaro were out yes­ter­day as part of the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment’s Flood Mit­i­ga­tion and Shel­ter Man­age­ment 2025 ex­er­cise, which was launched last week.

With mi­nor flood­ing al­ready re­port­ed in Ma­yaro, Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (MR­CRC) chair­man Ray­mond Co­zi­er urged all cit­i­zens to par­tic­i­pate in the pro­gramme. In some cas­es, how­ev­er, he said landown­ers were re­luc­tant to grant es­sen­tial equip­ment ac­cess to some ar­eas via their prop­er­ties.

Speak­ing at Gup­py Hill, Co­zi­er stressed the need for com­mu­ni­ty co-op­er­a­tion, not­ing that floods af­fect en­tire neigh­bour­hoods, not just in­di­vid­ual homes.

“We are ask­ing landown­ers to un­der­stand and be part of the pro­gramme. I am ask­ing res­i­dents to be very re­spon­si­ble with the dump­ing of old fridges and stoves. Those things clog wa­ter­cours­es. Go­ing for­ward, when we are de­vel­op­ing en­trance cross­ings, do that un­der­stand­ing the hin­drances that will come with heavy show­ers,” Co­zi­er said.

For the first two days of the cam­paign, the clean-up crew will tar­get the Gup­py Hill wa­ter­course. With the min­istry sup­ply­ing equip­ment, Co­zi­er said the ad­di­tion­al re­sources will sup­ple­ment the cor­po­ra­tion’s lone ex­ca­va­tor, which was al­ready de­ployed to clear the Laz­zari Riv­er af­ter a tree fell across it.

From there, teams will move to oth­er flood-prone ar­eas such as Mafek­ing, Ker­na­ham, Guayagua­yare, Cra­paud Foot and Charu­ma.

“All the ar­eas iden­ti­fied over the years as flood­ing ar­eas, our equip­ment will be at­tack­ing those ar­eas,” Co­zi­er said, not­ing that while the pro­gramme can­not elim­i­nate flood­ing, it aims to re­duce its im­pact while long-term so­lu­tions are ex­plored.

In Pe­nal, in­ter­mit­tent rain­fall over the week­end trig­gered lo­calised flood­ing.

Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gow­tam Ma­haraj said crews were pre­pared to sup­port res­i­dents if dis­as­ter struck and had con­tin­ued clean­ing op­er­a­tions through­out the rain­fall to meet ris­ing de­mand. For­tu­nate­ly, he said no homes were dam­aged.

“There has been so much deficit in terms of clean­ing in the re­gion that we are just clean­ing as much as we can, hop­ing it can help. In the (Pe­nal) Rock Road area, in Scott’s Road, be­tween 6.30 am and 9.30 am, we had wa­ter on the roads, which was im­pass­able to cars. We di­vert­ed cars through Good­man Trace and Best Trace. In the af­ter­noon, from 4.30 to 9.30, we had flood­ing at the five-mile (mark) along (Pe­nal) Rock Road it­self, near Mulchan and Good­man Trace,” Ma­haraj said.

He ex­plained that yes­ter­day’s low tide at 2 am helped drain wa­ter from the Coro­ma­ta Riv­er, which chan­nels runoff from Moru­ga to Debe. A fall­en tree was quick­ly re­moved from Pe­nal Rock Road, but with riv­er lev­els still high, he warned that fur­ther rain­fall could bring more se­vere flood­ing.

As he over­saw clear­ing works along Clarke Road, Ma­haraj said the cor­po­ra­tion was al­so ad­dress­ing wa­ter­ways un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Min­istries of Works and Agri­cul­ture. Mean­while, as­sess­ments were un­der­way for farm­ing ar­eas af­fect­ed by the swollen Poodai La­goon.

He said long-term so­lu­tions are crit­i­cal in that area and should in­clude prop­er flood­gates, re­ten­tion ponds, and em­bank­ments. These mea­sures, he not­ed, are cov­ered un­der the South Oropouche Basin Flood Adap­ta­tion Project—fund­ed through a US$10 mil­lion grant to the Gov­ern­ment—and which be­gan in Sep­tem­ber 2023.

“Re­gard­less of how much we clean drains, those so­lu­tions are need­ed to re­duce suf­fer­ing,” Ma­haraj said, call­ing on the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment to ful­ly ex­e­cute the plan.

While Puz­zle Is­land ex­pe­ri­enced mi­nor flood­ing, farm­ers near the Poodai La­goon are brac­ing for loss­es af­ter ris­ing wa­ters sub­merge their fields.

Farmer Ram­c­hand Ram­nar­ine said ex­ces­sive rain and blocked drainage were caus­ing a loss of crops as a re­sult of flood­ing He not­ed that a mix of crops is grown in the area, and once sub­merged for over a week, most will die.

He said flood­ing is an an­nu­al oc­cur­rence be­cause it is a basin. The farm­ers usu­al­ly try to plant one crop in the dry sea­son, but un­sea­son­al rains can still bring floods.

While farm­ers can ap­ply for State com­pen­sa­tion, on­ly those with of­fi­cial farmer badges qual­i­fy. Ram­nar­ine said bet­ter drainage main­te­nance could help re­duce the risk and called on fel­low farm­ers to as­sist in clean-up ef­forts.