The other two phases of the Mahaica, Mahaicony, Abary-Agricultural Development Authority (MMA-ADA) will cost in excess of US$60M, says Malcolm Alli, an engineer formerly attached to the project in the seventies.
Writing to this newspaper, Alli said that the poor soil conditions that will be encountered and the extent of the works involved will present challenges and require more money than first thought.
The government at present is negotiating a grant with the Government of Japan to finance phases two and three of the project. The figure being bandied about is in the neighbourhood of US$60M.
But General Manager of the MMA-ADA Rudolph Gajraj is not convinced that Alli’s assessment of the funds needed is accurate. Gajraj rejected most of what Alli proposed in the letter.
He said that with such projects, the spending in the various stages is incremental and each stage is catered for at that time and therefore it would be less than objective to state that any single amount is needed for the project.
According to Gajraj, the MMA Authority is looking at a number of proposals and they will also be guided by the World Bank-funded Conservancy Adaptation Project that is ongoing.
Alli said that the problem lies squarely with the operation of Phase one of the MMA Scheme and the seven-door sluice not releasing compensatory water flows into the Abary River to keep the river alive. He said that this forces the Mahaicony Creek to carry not only its drainage share “but the Abary as well which it is unable to do, precipitating the flooding.”
He said that keeping the Abary River alive was how stage 1 of the MMA scheme was originally designed to function. “To compound the problem the seven-door sluice appears to be seized up, leaking and has never been opened since its construction and handover in 1980.
As a result the entire Abary River including its mouth some 45 miles long is silted and would require a huge operation, engineering expertise and lots of money to fix. I do not believe a river this long has ever been desilted before,” he said.
“I feel the govt, engineers and the MMA authority should fly over the entire area during heavy rainfall and at low tides and observe conditions for themselves rather than spending vast sums of money empoldering and sectioning the Mahaicony area to stop the flooding,” Alli said.
He stated that hydrographic soundings of the Abary River along its entire length should also be carried out and the levels obtained compared with the ones taken before the sluice was built and the river dammed. “You can then deduce the extent of the siltation,” he said.
Gajraj noted that surveys showed that the sediment load in the Abary River is less than in the Mahaica and Mahaicony. “If we are to discharge water into the seven door sluice, we will flood the place,” Gajraj told this newspaper. The point has however been made that the flows through the sluice should only be of a sufficient amount to keep the river alive and clear sedimentation.
Gajraj said too that for purposes of irrigation, it doesn’t make sense to discharge too much water from the Abary or farmers will suffer from lack of irrigation during the dry months.
He explained that in terms of flood control, the MMA has been carrying the flood control needs of Region 5 for years but the credit it receives is poor.
Over the past three years since the Great Flood of 2005, farmers and residents of the upper reaches of the Mahaicony areas were plagued with floods and calls have been made for the acceleration of the MMA project with a view to bringing additional drainage capacity to the East Demerara Water Conservancy. (Johann Earle)
