My solution to flooding in Port of Spain

THE EDITOR: The worst recent flooding has been mainly in the rural areas of Trinidad, and the required remedies are well known: clearing blocked drains and watercourses, and dredging the rivers and major drainage channels. The only thing needed now is the will, and the funding, to carry out these flood prevention measures.

The situation is very different in downtown Port of Spain, where even after a short period of rainfall there is serious street flooding, and nobody seems to have any idea of what to do about it.

I would like to propose a solution. It is clear that the main problem is not so much that the water is not being drained off fast enough – the bigger problem is that, especially at high tide, the water has nowhere to go.

So my proposal is to create a large retention pond by dredging and enclosing the existing basin in the sea area between Sea Lots and the lighthouse. This basin is already about 75 per cent enclosed, so it would not be a major undertaking to enclose it completely by creating a bund from the dredged material.

All that would then be required is to create new drains to direct the rainwater to the retention pond, where high-volume pumps would be installed to pump the water into the harbour.

The operation of this facility would be simple. The water in the retention pond would normally be maintained at a very low level. As soon as there is heavy rainfall and it starts to fill, the level-controlled pumps would activate automatically, these pumps being self-contained engine-driven – to operate even if there is a power failure.

In a lot of cases, like this one, we don’t need expensive foreign experts to tell us what to do – just a little common sense.

GARY N VOSS via e-mail

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"My solution to flooding in Port of Spain"

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