It is un­like­ly that the sit­u­a­tion at Mas­sa­hood Junc­tion in Fyz­abad, where a home was il­le­gal­ly con­struct­ed over an in-ser­vice 16-inch Her­itage oil pipeline, is an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent.

This coun­try’s build­ing and plan­ning reg­u­la­tions are reg­u­lar­ly flout­ed, as ev­i­denced by the hun­dreds of struc­tures—res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial—in lo­ca­tions where they pose en­vi­ron­men­tal and safe­ty threats, as well as con­ges­tion and in­con­ve­nience.

Every year, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the rainy sea­son, cit­i­zens ex­pe­ri­ence the cat­a­stroph­ic ef­fects of un­planned and unau­tho­rised de­vel­op­ments when there are floods, land­slides and oth­er dis­as­ters, in­cur­ring sig­nif­i­cant loss­es and en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion.

There are well-doc­u­ment­ed cas­es of build­ings con­struct­ed in haz­ard-prone ar­eas, riv­er cours­es be­ing il­le­gal­ly di­vert­ed and hills be­ing cut away to make way for struc­tures that do not have Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion (TCPD) ap­proval.

A lot of the time, dis­cus­sions on un­planned de­vel­op­ments fo­cus on the scores of squat­ter com­mu­ni­ties across this coun­try and there is gen­uine cause for con­cern. Some of these squat­ter sites have, in re­cent years, ex­pand­ed in­to en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive ar­eas, in­clud­ing for­est re­serves, in­creas­ing the po­ten­tial for cat­a­clysmic out­comes in the event of a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter.

They are not the biggest prob­lems, how­ev­er, since there are sev­er­al well-ap­point­ed res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial prop­er­ties that are just as il­le­gal as the squat­ter com­mu­ni­ties.

The sit­u­a­tion at Mas­sa­hood Junc­tion, which was brought in­to the na­tion­al spot­light on­ly af­ter the pipeline rup­tured last Sun­day, is par­tic­u­lar­ly alarm­ing be­cause it could so eas­i­ly have been a full-scale dis­as­ter with trag­ic out­comes.

The tem­po­rary dis­lo­ca­tion of res­i­dents and the ef­fects of the fumes from the oil and gas on their health pale in com­par­i­son to the big­ger dan­gers lurk­ing a few feet un­der their homes.

The af­fect­ed res­i­dents and the fam­i­ly whose home sits atop the pipeline claimed to be un­aware it was in ser­vice.

How­ev­er, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um of­fi­cials have coun­tered that the fam­i­ly was re­peat­ed­ly con­tact­ed last year and warned to stop con­struc­tion over the pipeline. Apart from cease-and-de­sist no­tices, there were warn­ing signs over the pipeline right-of-way clear­ly stat­ing: “Please avoid these ar­eas, as oil and gas ex­po­sure is dan­ger­ous and pos­es a re­al risk to peo­ple and prop­er­ty.”

The spill that oc­curred, as dis­tress­ing as it was for those af­fect­ed, was pre­ventable. How­ev­er, Her­itage was un­able to car­ry out rou­tine checks and main­te­nance of the pipeline due to the struc­ture built over it.

Now that a po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion has been ex­posed, once again putting the fo­cus on this coun­try’s un­planned de­vel­op­ment prob­lem, all of the rel­e­vant state agen­cies need to take de­ci­sive ac­tion against these il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties.

It might al­so be time for state-owned Her­itage to un­der­take a com­pre­hen­sive au­dit of its pipeline in­fra­struc­ture to iden­ti­fy all unau­tho­rised struc­tures en­croach­ing on live lines and take the nec­es­sary ac­tion.

Al­so need­ed is a re­view of the role and func­tions of the TCPD, the agency re­spon­si­ble for the ad­min­is­tra­tion, plan­ning and reg­u­lat­ing of land use. For years, the TCPD has ap­peared al­most pow­er­less to car­ry out its man­date due to man­pow­er short­ages and oth­er chal­lenges.

The Of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands al­so needs to come un­der more scruti­ny.

All these en­ti­ties have been falling short of their crit­i­cal roles in reg­u­lat­ing land use in T&T, lead­ing to wide­spread land abuse. They need to be called to ac­count.