Joshua Seemu­n­gal

More than three years af­ter the Gov­ern­ment was grant­ed per­mis­sion to pro­ceed with its $1.7 bil­lion Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way Ex­ten­sion to Man­zanil­la Project by the Privy Coun­cil in Au­gust 2018, there are re­newed con­cerns about the project.

Aca­d­e­mics, en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivists and San­gre Grande busi­ness own­ers and res­i­dents are all ques­tion­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to move for­ward with the project, which has al­ready cost hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars.

While some aca­d­e­mics and ac­tivists ar­gue that the project is un­nec­es­sary from a de­vel­op­men­tal stand­point, some busi­ness own­ers and res­i­dents are claim­ing that it is wors­en­ing flood­ing in parts of San­gre Grande.

Work on the high­way be­gan on Jan­u­ary 8, 2018, and Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS), a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion, ob­tained an in­ter­im junc­tion from the High Court stop­ping work on Jan­u­ary 15. In­ter­im judge­ment was dis­charged by Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran on Feb­ru­ary 6, 2018, and re­in­stat­ed pend­ing the privy coun­cil de­ci­sion.

As ev­i­dence to the lo­cal courts and the Privy Coun­cil in its le­gal chal­lenge of the high­way project, FFOS pre­sent­ed a copy of a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) unit ap­proval form as re­quest­ed in 2017 by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and NID­CO.

Busi­ness­man Gary Aboud, the cor­po­rate sec­re­tary of FFOS, had claimed that the high­way was ap­proved un­der a neb­u­lous en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact as­sess­ment that was not prop­er­ly pre­pared in con­sid­er­a­tion of the pos­si­ble en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts.

In Au­gust 2018, the Privy Coun­cil dis­missed an ap­peal by the FFOS against an award of the CEC.

Water runoff from the highway extension project.

Courtesy RUDI SINGH

Crit­i­cisms as the project ‘be­gins and ends in the for­est’

At present, the por­tion of the project com­plet­ed be­gins in the for­est bor­der­ing the Aripo Sa­van­nas–300 me­tres east of the Cu­mu­to Main Road–and ends in the for­est, 600 me­tres west of Guaico Trace.

Kall Co Ltd was award­ed the con­tract for ap­prox­i­mate­ly $400 mil­lion.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 90 me­ters wide, the site is full of con­struc­tion ma­te­r­i­al and paved with con­crete.

It runs sev­er­al miles through the for­est along a path where scores of trees were cut down.

On Thurs­day, dur­ing a vis­it to the area, work was on­go­ing.

The pro­posed four-lane high­way, which the Gov­ern­ment said will con­nect Waller­field, Cu­mu­to, and Guaico, is al­so sup­posed to con­nect the pro­posed high­way to To­co from an in­ter­change at Ojoe Road in San­gre Grande.

Ac­cord­ing to NID­CO, the struc­ture will sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce ve­hi­cle con­ges­tion in Grande and sur­round­ing ar­eas, as well as pro­vide an ad­e­quate route to bring re­lief and evac­u­ate peo­ple out of east Trinidad in times of dis­as­ter.

How­ev­er, not every­one sees such val­ue in the project that be­gan in 2019.

Traf­fic en­gi­neer Dr Rae Fur­longe is a fierce crit­ic of the high­way project.

The traf­fic en­gi­neer does not be­lieve the project is nec­es­sary, as it serves lit­tle pur­pose.

“I am a firm be­liev­er that when mon­ey is tight, you have to re­struc­ture your pri­or­i­ties. Who will ben­e­fit from these five kilo­me­tres? I think it’s more than $200 mil­lion on that road and it is not fin­ished yet.

“It’s a se­cret high­way be­ing done. It’s rough­ly three or four kilo­me­tres from the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way, so how does that make sense? It’s like you’re liv­ing on a hill and in or­der to drain your land, you start build­ing the drain on top of the hill. Does that make sense? It is wrong-side en­gi­neer­ing,” Dr Fur­longe said.

Ac­cord­ing to him, the high­way’s orig­i­nal path was sup­posed to be slight­ly north of Va­len­cia but was changed to go to the south in­stead to lead to a con­nec­tor road from Va­len­cia Road where a round­about is be­ing built.

Dr Rae Furlonge

Why not dual the Va­len­cia Stretch?

“The vil­lagers from the area in Cu­mu­to, they tell me land done chang­ing hands al­ready in Cu­mu­to and Man­zanil­la. Why? Why is that? It tells me some­body is do­ing some­thing for com­mer­cial ben­e­fit.

“That high­way that they are build­ing now–five or six kilo­me­tres–con­nects the Cu­mu­to Road to the East­ern Main Road. If you want­ed to do some­thing use­ful in the short term, you know what I would have sug­gest­ed to them? Why not con­sid­er ex­tend­ing the Va­len­cia By­pass on­to the East­ern Main Road and dual the East­ern Main Road? Why not dual what they call the death strip (the Va­len­cia Stretch) down to Guaico? Wouldn’t that be more use­ful than a high­way in the back­roads in Cu­mu­to?” Dr Fur­longe asked.

Dr Fur­longe al­so ques­tioned the log­ic of hav­ing the high­way pass be­hind the Tamana In­Tech Park, which will even­tu­al­ly be the home of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s main cam­pus.

“How are UTT and Tamana In­Tech Park go­ing to ben­e­fit from a high­way be­hind them? How do you ex­pect to ben­e­fit in the short term? I know what they will tell you, they go­ing to build a road to con­nect that road, and then it will reach back to the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way. But is that log­i­cal? Shouldn’t you build from the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way, not from a road that con­nects noth­ing?” he ques­tioned.

“You see non­sense and de­cep­tion, I could do with­out that,” Dr Fur­longe added.

Ear­li­er in the year, Dr Fur­longe crit­i­cised the Cu­mu­to to San­gre Grande high­way and oth­er projects un­der­tak­en by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port un­der Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan.

In re­sponse, Sinanan ac­cused the traf­fic en­gi­neer of at­tempt­ing to mis­lead the na­tion.

In a re­sponse pub­lished in the dai­ly news­pa­pers, Sinanan said it was un­for­tu­nate that Dr Fur­longe called the project a “High­way to Nowhere,” say­ing that ar­eas such as San­gre Grande, To­co, Va­len­cia, Ma­yaro, Guaico and Man­zanil­la de­serve equal ac­cess, in­fra­struc­ture and op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Sinanan said that the de­ci­sion of the min­istry to pro­ceed with the south align­ment op­tion and not the op­tion north of Va­len­cia was based on the fact that the over­all length of the align­ment was short­er, the ter­rain along the south­ern align­ment was flat, and over­all con­struc­tion costs were cheap­er.

In his in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian last week, Dr Fur­longe ac­cused Sinanan of ly­ing about the re­duc­tion in length of the align­ment, claim­ing the south­ern align­ment was longer.

Gary Aboud

Aboud: It’s a mis­take, I don’t un­der­stand Sinanan’s log­ic

Aboud still firm­ly be­lieves the project is a mis­take from both a de­vel­op­men­tal and en­vi­ron­men­tal per­spec­tive.

“To­day, we have spent over $500 mil­lion on a high­way that be­gins in the for­est and ends in the for­est. It doesn’t have any road con­nec­tiv­i­ty. It doesn’t make any sense, in terms of a na­tion­al road net­work plan. It’s not in a high-traf­fic area that could al­le­vi­ate traf­fic what­so­ev­er, and it would ap­pear to some that it’s like some po­lit­i­cal favour or pay­back.

“I don’t un­der­stand the log­ic of Ro­han Sinanan, the ra­tio­nale of spend­ing tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey with­out ac­count­abil­i­ty. It’s non­sense or bor­der­line re­tar­da­tion in a coun­try that’s suf­fer­ing with so much pover­ty, trade im­bal­ances, mal­nu­tri­tion, a crime cri­sis, an un­der­fi­nanc­ing of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, fail­ing in­sti­tu­tions…There’s a mount­ing list of trag­ic cir­cum­stances of be­ing broke, yet you want to build a $500 mil­lion high­way…When are we ever go­ing to com­plete it?” Aboud asked.

The CEC

There is ev­i­dence that the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty’s (EMA) tech­ni­cal team ini­tial­ly warned the EMA that fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions to de­ter­mine the pos­si­ble en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts of the project were re­quired.

The doc­u­ments sug­gest­ed that the team ob­ject­ed to en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance be­ing giv­en for the project, yet a cer­tifi­cate was grant­ed.

The Sun­day Guardian viewed a copy of the CEC unit ap­proval form as re­quest­ed in 2017 by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and NID­CO.

In the doc­u­ment, the tech­ni­cal re­view team, which is sup­posed to de­ter­mine whether the project can have neg­a­tive en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts, clear­ly stat­ed its con­cerns and ob­jec­tions to the grant­i­ng of a CEC.

Ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion B of the form, ap­provals were re­quired by at least four tech­ni­cal of­fi­cers.

Ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion C, Sum­ma­ry of De­ci­sion, a se­nior man­ag­er at the EMA had in­struct­ed, “Please com­plete your re­view with the of­fi­cers by Tues­day 20th Lunchtime and ad­vise me of how you will be ad­dress­ing the con­di­tions in the CEC…I ex­pect to have a CEC for sig­na­ture by Thurs­day 22nd 2017.”

Un­der Of­fi­cer Notes on Re­view of Re­sponse to RAR (Ri­par­i­an Ar­eas [the in­ter­face be­tween land and a riv­er or stream] Reg­u­la­tion) an of­fi­cer wrote, “To date, a prop­er base­line as­sess­ment has not been con­duct­ed. Such an as­sess­ment forms the ba­sis of any en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact as­sess­ments…I do not agree that a CEC should be is­sued for this project at this time since the ma­jor­i­ty of is­sues high­light­ed by the first RAR have not been ad­dressed sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly by the Ap­pli­cant (MOWT and NID­CO). This is the gen­er­al con­sen­sus of the tech­ni­cal re­view team.”

The note added that the man­ag­er in­struct­ed that “the doc­u­ment not be sub­ject­ed to re­view by oth­er agen­cies who formed part of the re­view team.”

The man­ag­er, ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cer writ­ing the re­port, al­so in­struct­ed that the doc­u­ment not be sub­ject­ed to pub­lic re­view.

An of­fi­cer said of that in­struc­tion, “I strong­ly dis­agree with this de­ci­sion/in­struc­tion. Per­ti­nent con­cerns were raised through the pub­lic com­ment process and, as such, it is on­ly fair that the pub­lic be privy to all in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed in re­sponse to their con­cerns. We have done this in the past for oth­er ma­jor projects where pub­lic con­cern was reg­is­tered such as the Clax­ton Bay Port ap­pli­ca­tion.”

Point four of the note states while an in­struc­tion to pre­pare a CEC was re­ceived, sev­er­al de­tails re­gard­ing the scope and de­sign of the project “re­main out­stand­ing.”

The tech­ni­cal re­view team wrote that it be­lieved a sec­ond RAR and not a CEC should be is­sued to al­low for a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the re­ceiv­ing en­vi­ron­ment for the project (the Aripo Sa­van­na), as well as the po­ten­tial range and mag­ni­tude of im­pacts.

“The place­ment of con­di­tions such as re­quests for base­line in­for­ma­tion is con­trary to the prin­ci­ples of good en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact as­sess­ment. We should be mind­ful that this project is in prox­im­i­ty to a des­ig­nat­ed En­vi­ron­men­tal­ly Sen­si­tive Area, which is in­hab­it­ed by at least one en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly-sen­si­tive species. It is my tech­ni­cal opin­ion that the pre­cau­tion­ary prin­ci­ple be ap­plied in the con­sid­er­a­tion of this project,” it fur­ther read.

It was not­ed that it is high­ly ir­reg­u­lar and un­prece­dent­ed to is­sue a de­ter­mi­na­tion for a CEC ap­pli­ca­tion, for which there are sig­nif­i­cant out­stand­ing con­cerns to be ad­dressed based on the re­quire­ments of a TOR (Terms of Ref­er­ence) that was is­sued for the con­duct of an EIA in sup­port of the ap­pli­ca­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the Privy Coun­cil rul­ing, the EMA is­sued a CEC for the high­way on June 22, 2017, sub­ject to a long list of con­di­tions, in­clud­ing re­quire­ments to sub­mit a re­vised EIA, un­der­take sev­er­al stud­ies and sub­mit for ap­proval of an En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Plan.

A copy of the CEC was placed on the na­tion­al reg­is­ter on Ju­ly 3, 2017.

On Au­gust 17, 2017, ac­cord­ing to the Privy Coun­cil rul­ing, a re­vised ver­sion of the EIA was sub­mit­ted. Page 7, be­tween Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber base­line re­ports on var­i­ous mat­ters out­lined by the con­di­tions, were sub­mit­ted and ap­proved.

In its rul­ing, the Privy Coun­cil not­ed that the EMA’s MD Mr Ro­mano tes­ti­fied that, “There is no third EIA. Con­di­tion 1.1 of the Gen­er­al Terms and Con­di­tions of the CEC re­quired the In­ter­est­ed Par­ty to sub­mit a cor­rect­ed and com­pre­hen­sive ver­sion of the EIA re­flect­ing all ad­just­ments/ad­di­tions made as a re­sult of the re­view and as­sess­ment process, such re­port to in­te­grate the up­dat­ed ver­sion of all re­ports sub­mit­ted in sup­port of the ap­pli­ca­tion for the CEC. In com­pli­ance with this con­di­tion, NID­CO sub­mit­ted the fi­nalised EIA to the EMA on 17 Au­gust 2017.”

The Privy Coun­cil said no rea­son was put for­ward to doubt the ac­cu­ra­cy of Ro­mano’s state­ment, adding that the pow­er to im­pose con­di­tions on a CEC is in terms un­lim­it­ed.

It ruled that there was no rea­son why the CEC could not in­clude an up­dat­ed EIA.

The drone picture shows flooding in Sangre Grande last month, described as one of the worst ever experienced in the area.

Courtesy RUDI SINGH

Grande res­i­dents say project caus­ing flood­ing to wors­en

San­gre Grande busi­ness own­ers and sev­er­al res­i­dents from ar­eas east of the East­ern Main Road–like Roops­ingh Street, Ram­dass Street, Neer­an­jan Street, and Savi Street–be­lieve that the on­go­ing project is wors­en­ing flood­ing in San­gre Grande.

 A well-known busi­ness­man from the area–who with­held his iden­ti­ty–and Chair­man of the East­ern Busi­ness and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion Ri­car­do Mo­hammed spoke to the Sun­day Guardian.

“Be­ing born and raised in Grande, I have nev­er seen this amount of flood­ing, with small amounts of rain­fall. Grande has al­ways been con­sid­ered the wa­ter basin of the East. The oc­ca­sion­al times we get heavy down­pours rivers flood out. We know cer­tain ar­eas that will flood. Ar­eas of Pic­ton Road, Coalmine, Tamana, Oropouche,” Mo­hammed said.

Ricardo Mohammed

“We are now see­ing flood­ing in San­gre Grande that is last­ing more than 48 to 72 hours, and it’s not just the type of flood­ing we’ve been see­ing, new ar­eas in San­gre Grande are be­ing flood­ed. Now, we are see­ing a lot of silt ma­te­r­i­al that is very sim­i­lar to quar­ry-type in­dus­try ma­te­r­i­al com­ing in­to the main rivers.”

Ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammed, who was al­so the for­mer pres­i­dent of the San­gre Grande Cham­ber of Com­merce, when the area ex­pe­ri­enced the dread­ed floods of 2018, the usu­al, low-ly­ing ar­eas were flood­ed.

The busi­ness­man, who did not want to be named, said, “This area has nev­er in his­to­ry flood­ed like this. This af­fects a large part of San­gre Grande. This is lit­er­al­ly a high­way to hell in San­gre Grande.

“I sat on two con­sul­ta­tions for this high­way and I told them, no, you are mak­ing a mis­take. Do not in­ter­fere with the Aripo Sa­van­nas. It’s a for­est re­serve…Peo­ple who live around the area in Cu­mu­to said al­lyuh don’t know what you all do­ing.”

He said dur­ing con­sul­ta­tions, en­vi­ron­men­tal NGOs op­er­at­ing in the area warned NID­CO that the Aripo Sa­van­nas holds as much as eight feet of wa­ter, and its abil­i­ty to hold wa­ter could be im­pact­ed by the high­way project.

“On all ac­counts, it ap­peared to be a trav­es­ty, a waste of mon­ey and I don’t imag­ine why they would do that.

“The an­swer came and it’s re­al­ly hor­ri­ble. I knew from the minute that the flood start­ed. I said this is the high­way flood­ing us. I knew be­cause I’ve been here 25 years on this prop­er­ty…I have no doubt that this wa­ter is from the Aripo Sa­van­nas, start­ing to drain this way now. There’s the Aripo Riv­er that this wa­ter would flow in­to and so in­stead of head­ing west, the wa­ter start­ed head­ing east,” the busi­ness­man lament­ed.

From aer­i­al footage seen of the project, one can see drains, full of murky, silt­ed wa­ter, drain­ing from the high­way in­to what ap­pears to be a re­ten­tion pond and small wa­ter­cours­es near­by.

Mak­ing things worse in the area, they said, a con­trac­tor who re­cent­ly ac­quired a piece of prop­er­ty along the Guaico Riv­er and East­ern Main Road, con­struct­ed a riv­er tun­nel that nar­rowed the wa­ter chan­nel.

Car­lene, who lives along the East­ern Main Road, near the Guaico riv­er, said in her 33 years of liv­ing in the area, she has nev­er seen flood­ing as she did four weeks ago.

“The force of the wa­ter pushed down my gate and my fence. It did and nev­er in his­to­ry have we had this. If flood­ing would oc­cur, the height of the wa­ter would be at most two feet, but this time, it was more than that,” she said.

On Thurs­day, the Sun­day Guardian al­so vis­it­ed the prop­er­ty of a man who lives a few hun­dred me­ters away from the end of the com­plet­ed part of the project, near Guaico.

He said there used to be a rel­a­tive­ly small amount of wa­ter that would pool in the acres of land be­hind his home, but now there’s sig­nif­i­cant­ly more wa­ter.

“Since they cut down the trees, it’s a lot more wa­ter. It usu­al­ly isn’t so bad. Now, it is like a sea. It has to be that more wa­ter is com­ing in­to the three rivers in the area be­cause of the project. Be­fore they cut down the trees, you nev­er used to see no big set of wa­ter and thing, but since they cut it down, you get more vol­ume,” he claimed.

No re­sponse from Sinanan

On Mon­day an email was sent to the com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, seek­ing an up­date on the project.

On Fri­day, calls to Sinanan’s phone went unan­swered.

We left a voice mes­sage and What­sApp mes­sages ask­ing him to call.

In the mes­sages, we al­so asked him to re­spond to al­le­ga­tions by some busi­ness­men and res­i­dents that the on­go­ing high­way project had wors­ened flood­ing in ar­eas east of the East­ern Main Road in San­gre Grande; to claims by Dr Fur­long that the project does not make much sense de­vel­op­men­tal­ly; and we asked him how much has been spent on the project thus far, and what is the es­ti­mat­ed time­line for com­ple­tion.

Up to late Fri­day evening, Sinanan had not an­swered these ques­tions.