Penal/Debe region not out of the woods yet with floods

ALTHOUGH much of the flooding in the Penal/Debe area took place on June 11 and quickly subsided, while mainly limited to the streets, the regional corporation's chairman has warned that the risk of further inundation was elevated with high tide on the afternoon of June 12.

Penal/Debe Regional Corporation (PDRC) chairman Gowtam Maharaj told Newsday most of the tributaries running through the burgess were almost at capacity by 2 pm and could burst their banks when the tide came in. The Met Office forecast high tide around 5.26 pm. Apart from being near capacity, he said the major rivers in the area flow into the South Oropouche River which was around 90 per cent capacity.

"Reality is, if it backs up it will overtop. It's a large river."

The South Orpouche River was listed at 85 per cent capacity by the Ministry of Rural Development and Local Government in a 6 am update on June 12.

He said the PDRC's disaster management unit was distributing sandbags to residents and was on standby to respond to any of these flooding incidents. He advised residents in flood-prone areas to conclude business outdoors and get home to prepare before the tide rose.

The Met Office issued an orange-level riverine flood alert for areas near the Caroni River on the night of June 11 as it neared its threshold. No such alert was issued for the South Oropouche River or any of its tributaries by 2.30 pm on June 12.

The PDRC spent most of the day shoring up the banks of one of the rivers at the Tulsa Trace Picnic Site. Called Three Mouth, it's the point where the Coora River, Blackwater Channel and the South Oropouche River meet. Over 200 sandbags were placed along the lowest point of the Coora River bank by workers of the PDRC, Ministry of Works and members of the TT Defence Force.

Debe South councillor Khemraj Seecharan said this was to prevent water from flowing out of the Coora River into nearby areas and back into the Blackwater channel, slowing the rate at which water is evacuated from the latter.

"More water going up the Blackwater Channel means there's a flooding situation now for the rest of the community. What we have done with these sandbags here, this has eliminated just about 80 per cent of the overflow water."

He said the pumps were also functioning well at the pump site to help further evacuate the waters.

The Defence Force was requested to help stranded secondary school students within the PDRC area get to their CAPE exams but did not need to as routes were not inundated.

The area was hit by street flash floods on June 11, which dissipated within a couple of hours, due to the passage of a tropical wave. The UNC-led regional corporation credits the relatively low impact on the area to a recent aggressive watercourse clearing exercise launched by the Ministry of Rural Development and Local Government by the newly installed UNC-led administration.

Despite most of the flooding being limited to the streets and watercourse clearing exercises, residents living in low-lying areas still had their homes flooded. Residents at the end of Seuradge Trace, Debe had their homes inundated since June 11 and don't expect that the water would run off until a few days later, especially if rains continue to fall or rivers burst their banks.

Mohammed Ali Gafur, 69, lived in the area since the early 1990s and had waist-high water under his two-storey home. No stranger to flooding, he said this incident was not as bad as it typically is with water often chest high.

Although he gives some credit to recent watercourse clearing activities, he believes the rain did not fall long and hard enough.

"If it fall continuously, then the volume of water would begin to rise. Then again, you hadda watch if the tide low and then again if it's spring tide."

Seecharan said flooding in Seuradge Trace was due to how low its watercourse, the Narine Persad Channel, lay compared to the other rivers it flows into. He said once the Coromata and South Oropouche rivers reach capacity, the Narine Persad Channel overtops into the nearby community.

Many of the areas which typically flood, like near the New Cut Channel in Debe, did not see a significant impact leading residents of those areas to believe the clearing exercises worked.

One resident, who preferred to go by his village name of "Sickie", said the cleaning made a difference for the community stating: "If that bank buss, we in trouble."

Another resident, Terry Beepath, also acknowledged that the cleaning could have helped but said he was bracing for high tide which could cause the river to overtop.

San Francique resident Mohan Ramkhalawan believed the clearing exercise was a good initiative but said long-term solutions are needed for flooding in the area. He called on the administration to hold public consultations with residents on flooding similar to what they did for crime during the campaign trail.

"Invite citizens in the area, in the district to come up – whoever have a flood plan – it don't have to be me, it could be anybody."

In the interview with Newsday earlier in the day, the corporation chairman acknowledged that more than cleaning was necessary to resolve flooding woes in the region. He said he planned to approach the Minister of Rural Development and Local Government, Khadijah Ameen, next week to get an update on the US$10 million South Oropouche River Basin Project launched in 2023. The project was supposed to help build climate resilience of the South Oropouche River Basin population and ecosystems to flooding, sea-level rise and expected increasing water deficit events. He said despite word of studies being conducted, no action has been taken to date.

"We have not had the engineering works executed."

He added: "We heard that there are some studies but we want to see work on the ground; refurbishment of the floodgate, the retention pond, the strengthening of the embankment of the New Cut Channel and all of the channels that lead up to this point here, the phenomenon of the elevated river beds to be addressed and, of course, (in) the embankment are current breaches so we need an effort into that."