Friday’s commissioning of an $86.6M mobile drainage pump at Hope, East Coast Demerara must have lifted the spirits of residents in the area. Its specs were impressive: 36-inch discharge pipes with the capacity to extrude 560 gallons per second. It will clearly improve drainage in these communities so often under threat from heavy rain and poor maintenance of primary and secondary outlets.
As much as the government should take the credit for this purchase and installation, it must be aware that the long-term drainage needs of the East Coast, and for that matter, all of the country must be located within a drainage master plan. Master plans have gotten bad raps here recently because they have become metaphors for doing nothing but they can be comprehensive blueprints where every single step is part of a sequence to solve the larger problem.
The Hope mobile pump will assist as long as it is properly maintained and not vandalized or cannibalized. But it doesn’t appear to be part of a master plan to get to grips with the real threat and angst that has gripped the country since 2005.
The very evident climate change will exacerbate this problem and worsen anxieties and so we must do what is within our capability. Clearly we will be unable to prevent global sea level rises; addressing that is the task of the larger international dialogue and the lift-off that Bali has provided. At this stage the question of relocating the capital has not gathered momentum and therefore it would seem that the policymakers do not deem this either necessary or feasible.
What is left then is to grapple with what is reasonably within our capability. The coastal plain is sandwiched between the ever-rising sea and the fragile conservancies and primary drainage that can be easily overwhelmed by raging rivers fed by heavy rain. It is therefore essential that both the threat to the north and the one to the south be harnessed in a master plan that will then be assessed for financing.
There are several absolute priorities in this master plan that will hopefully be devised. The present conservancy adaptation programme that the World Bank is assisting with is only an element of what we need and questions must arise over the wisdom of aiming at half-measures and partial solutions.
First, in relation to the problem to the north, European Union financing has made a major difference in maintaining the walls. At the recent signing of further assistance, one couldn’t help noting the EU admonition that a comprehensive policy was needed.
In a press release it said that “A sector policy will not only provide the basis required to ensure adequate levels of funding for preventative maintenance, but will also provide for an integrated comprehensive approach under which co-ordinated and sustainable actions can take place”.
In addition to the current maintenance, a careful assessment has to be made about whether the walls shouldn’t be raised by six to nine inches as an additional step to protect the coastal strip. This, of course, will be a very costly venture and one that would have to be weighed against the benefits and the wisdom of trying to gauge by how much the sea will rise.
Second, the East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC) will remain a major threat to the East Coast for the foreseeable future. A decision has to be taken whether it should be retained at all in its present form given its fragility from years of little maintenance and investment. If it is decided that it should be retained then the present patchwork that is evident whenever reporters are taken to visit the EDWC and the conservancy adaptation project will not suffice. The deeply sedimented reservoir will have to be excavated, water channels will have to reopened to improve the hydraulic flow, the northern dam will have to be heavily fortified or rebuilt and new outlets to the sea and Demerara River opened to the north and west.
Third, the plight of the residents of Mahaica and Mahaicony is unbearable. While the government has attempted to lift embankments along the creeks and in the MMA these measures do not address the fullness of the problem. Perhaps only phases 2 and 3 of the MMA project will suffice and an urgent decision has to be taken on if they are necessary and where the funding will come from.
Fourth, Georgetown which has sprawled alarmingly beyond its original drainage contours needs major help which is well beyond the means of a council whether controlled by the PPP/C or the opposition. The mainstay Liliendaal pump station is decrepit and is in urgent need of replacement. The reliance on gravity flow and tidal drainage has to end and new infrastructure installed at all of the drainage stations. That is the only way Georgetown will be able to stave off the flood threat.
Fifth, there has to be a comprehensive programme to routinely desilt and remove weeds from rivers and primary drains. The silted up Abary River remains a weighty dilemma which can impact on decisions as it relates to phases 2 and 3 of the MMA. Engineer Malcolm Alli has pointed out that the original design of phase 1 had catered for water flows to desilt the Abary and keep it alive. Decades of paralysis has now created a major problem.
Unless these critical areas are located within a comprehensive plan a lot of money is going to be wasted. In the aftermath of the Great Flood it had been recommended that a flow study be done to map how the floods were occurring and which bodies of water were posing the greatest dangers.
Despite much finger pointing and acrimony over how the flooding was occurring this recommendation was not proceeded with though the conservancy adaptation project will provide a lot of data.
With the handsome debt write-offs that have come Guyana’s way under the HIPC and the multilateral debt relief initiative Guyana has to come to grips with its drainage problems and use the larger resource flows to secure it from flooding instead of begging the Venezuelans, the Chinese, the Japanese and every other seemingly willing nation. The whole purpose of relieving countries like Guyana of their debt is to enable them to stand on their own feet.
Two years have passed since the Great Flood. We repeat that President Jagdeo’s administration has a great obligation to take on the flood dilemma frontally. There is still enough time but two years have already been lost.
