The US$15M Hope Canal, or the Northern Relief Channel at the East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC), which the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) started in October 2010, would be the answer to flooding in the Mahaica, Mahaicony, Abary areas, according to Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon.
Dr Luncheon made this disclosure during a post-Cabinet briefing on Wednesday at the Office of the President as he was updating the media on the flood situation being experienced and he expressed government’s optimism over the project, the Government Information Agency (GINA) reported.
“The design of the Hope Canal is predicated in the one in a hundred years of level of rainfall to allow the discharge into the Atlantic. The residents who know about flooding and have been repeatedly affected year by year would cease after the completion of the conservancy,” he was quoted by GINA as saying.
The Northern Relief Channel has four components; the over 10–kilometre channel from the EDWC, a bridge across the public road, a conservancy head regulator with three gates, and outfall at the canal’s Atlantic end that will comprise eight gates.
The canal is being excavated by the NDIA while BK International, DIPCON Engineering and Courtney Benn Contracting Services were granted the contracts for the other three components.
GINA said further that over several weeks, measures have been undertaken by government to tackle the effects of La Nina weather phenomenon which has brought on heavy rainfall.
This in turn has led to several coastal and hinterland communities being inundated. The NDIA has undertaken emergency drainage works inclusive of cleaning and desilting of canals to ensure that flooding is reduced.
“Since the advent of the rainfall, the Mahaica and Mahaicony areas remain the worst… in which flood waters from the EDWC have been emptied to protect the integrity of the dam, which was being threatened,” Dr. Luncheon said.
