The government has reiterated that it is still in pursuit of plans to construct a canal that would lead directly to the Atlantic Ocean from the East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC).
Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon had made the announcement at a post-cabinet media briefing last month and said that the canal would be constructed at Hope on the East Coast Demerara. Works on this will not commence this year, Chief Executive Officer of the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA), Lionel Wordsworth told Stabroek News.
He said that the details on the project are being worked out by engineers of the NDIA and the Ministry of Works and while this is expected to be completed soon, the project itself would take “quite some time” to complete.
Consultants who had come here in the wake of the 2005 Great Flood had recommended several steps to ease the threat of flooding EDWC. They had pointed out that parts of the northern wall of the conservancy were in urgent need of rehabilitation and outlets that led to the Atlantic and Demerara River and had become dysfunctional and needed to be reopened. The prospect of building a new outlet north to the Atlantic was also floated. In recent years, the government has also sought foreign help for the dredging of river mouths such as the Abary and Pomeroon to improve drainage but this has not materialized. Completing phase two and three of the MMA scheme has also been floated to provide drainage infrastructure for the Mahaica and Mahaicony creeks but this is likely to cost over US$100M and is not on the cards at the moment.
Luncheon had noted that in the past Cabinet authorized expenditure for drainage works by rehabilitating several canals as well as improving the flow of water in the conservancy to the sluice at Land of Canaan, East Bank Demerara.
However, hydrological studies showed that additional drainage was required for safety purposes and this led to the search for a suitable site which ended with Hope being identified, Luncheon said.
He said that the construction requires a 300-foot reserve for efficient drainage to the Atlantic Ocean during the periods when the conservancy and its dams are challenged by increasing amounts of water. There are considerations for infrastructure in the area. “Cabinet’s decision will lead to some amount of relocation of homes, cessation of construction of homes and the abandonment of awards for house lots that would be lying in the intended path of the canal,” Luncheon had said.
Since the Great Flood of 2005, the intention of constructing such a canal has been voiced by the administration. “We are looking at this [an outlet to the Atlantic] possibility because in the event of a recurrence of the January 2005 flood we won’t want to revert to releasing water into the Mahaica Creek,” Minister of Agriculture, Robert Persaud had said in December last year. It had been stated that such a project would have an estimated cost of as much as US$5M.
In 2005 and 2006 the Mahaica Creek had been used as one of the main channels for draining water to the Atlantic Ocean during periods of heavy rainfall. This resulted in severe flooding in the Mahaica and Mahaicony creeks.
