Sinanan: Five years to eradicate flooding for good

WITHIN the next five years it is hoped that flooding in TT will be a thing of the past as plans are afoot to have a national drainage program aimed at eradicating the financial burden of flooding. The studies are now being done, but already Works and Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan ia saying it will be "an expensive project."

Speaking with Sunday Newsday at his London Street, Port of Spain office on Thursday, Sinanan said there is a programme being drafted, taking into consideration all the studies done previously, to have a national plan to treat with flooding.

“We have a consultant on board to look at a comprehensive drainage programme, a foreign consultant. We were able to secure a consultant through the CAF Development Bank. What they are doing for us is taking all the plans we have, because we have several studies in Trinidad, and the consultant will take all of them and make a comprehensive operational plan where we can start to get boots on the ground and get work done.”

The Corporacion Andina de Fomento (CAF) Development Bank is funding the plan at no cost to TT, and when completed, CAF will also facilitate the loan to finance the project which Sinanan said “will be an expensive project.”

In March 2019, the consultant, Witteveen+Bos International Projects B.V., out of the Netherlands, along with the Drainage Division of the Minister and CAF representatives, had technical site visits to several areas in TT. The objective was to diagnose the causes of flooding particularly with what took place in October 2018 where Greenvale, La Horquetta was almost swallowed by water after the surrounding rivers, Caroni and Manuel Congo burst their banks.

“The biggest challenge we have is people living on riverbanks and near the riverbank. There are parts of a river that we allow to breach because when it is filled the water can’t go out to sea. What some people are doing is filling up the low lying areas so water can’t breach at that point and the water will flood other places. What we have is a lot of illegal developments, construction, squatting, unplanned developments, the encroachment of the river banks and dumping into the watercourses.”

Sinanan added: “The onus is on the regional corporation to stop illegal construction. The corporations that make the most noise about flooding are the ones that do the least amount of action on illegal developments and construction. If we look at where most of the flooding take place you will realise that it have the most amount of illegal construction and unplanned development.”

He added that the building inspectors of regional corporations can stop illegal structures from being built but there is a lapse in this.

In March, TT received US $495,000 (TT$3.37million) non-repayable grant by CAF to deal with flooding. The non-reimbursable technical co-operation agreement, was singed by Gianpiero Leoncini, director representative of CAF Development Bank and Finance Minister Colm Imbert on March 5. The funds are to be used towards the creation of a Flood Management Master Plan to address the nation’s perennial challenges with drainage and flooding. The donation comes after CAF gave US$200,000 to assist with recovery following the October 2018 devastating floods that affected several areas, including Sangre Grande, Central and Greenvale housing scheme.

In 2018, following the flooding, the Ministry undertook a survey of the Caroni River, traversing its 40 km stretch identifying areas that need to be fixed in an attempt at stopping flooding. Thanks to silt, parts of the river were one foot deep and others reached a maximum depth of 16 feet. Rabindranath Jogie, Director of Mechanical Services at the ministry told the media then that the Caroni River and adjoining tributaries, were in dire need of dredging and a higher river bank. Jogie added that the river should be in the vicinity of 20 feet in depth.

Sinanan who toured the river then said going forward that extensive work would have to be done to raise the banks and de-silt the Caroni. This exercise will have to be in tandem with clearing the tributaries leading into the Caroni River.

He said then: “There is a programme that was approved by the Cabinet in the last fiscal year. The tenders for that were supposed to be out next week but we will have hold on that for now, review the scope of works and restart the process. What we will do is hold the tender, review it and have a new one in about a month or two.”

Addressing this, Sinanan said the entire project which is “overdue for about 15 years” started in June last year. The first phase was supposed to last 18 months but will be completed before time as it is now 85 per cent completed. He said this work assisted greatly with mitigating a repeat of the Greenvale flooding as it “significantly reduced flooding coming out of Caroni River.” Sinanan added that a major project will be done on the river that will see it being de-silted and the banks raised. The entire project, which is not yet budgeted, will see the state rebuilding the Caroni riverbank, repairing gates and installation of mobile pump. Phase one was the rebuilding of the banks from Kelly Village to El Socorro, a distance of 5.3 km.

De-silting programmes are broken down into phases, he said, with phase one being most critical areas. Phase one saw 60 projects done; phase two, 107; phase three, 99 and phase four, 104. There are currently 400 de-silting projects ongoing across the country costing a budgeted $100 million, Sinanan said involving some 60 contractors.

Another area currently getting attention are upgrading of pumps. Sinanan said of the 23 pumps in TT at 14 pumping stations, most of them are outdated having been in place since the 1950’s and 60’s.

“What we are doing is upgrading pumps, putting in modern pumps. There is a three-year programme to upgrade the pumps. South Quay was a trial. The retention pond was built 12 years ago never worked and was designed badly so now we are re-engineering it.

Of the 23 pumps and 20 are working. Sinanan said five automatic pumps, three of them mobile pumps, have been ordered and are en-route to TT while he will be commissioning another pump at Felicity. This will be the third automatic pump in use. The other two are at Port of Spain and Bamboo Settlement No3. The five new pumps will cost taxpayers $18 million. The three mobile pumps will be destined for Caroni River.