As the Ministry of Public Infrastructure awaits financing to execute works on a vulnerable portion of Mahaicony sea defence, emergency measures have been put in place to monitor the erosion that is rapidly taking place.
Geoffrey Vaughn, Chief Works Officer at the ministry, told Stabroek News on Thursday that the officers from the Sea and River Defence department have been monitoring the erosion and overtopping to ensure residents are not at risk of flooding.
Vaughn further explained that machinery is on site to rehabilitate any weak sections of the already vulnerable stretch of sea defences.
He also noted that given the difficulty in sourcing financing, with no budget in place, the department has asked the contractors repairing the breach between Dantzig and Fairfield to be on standby.
The Chief Works Officer added that they are expecting the emergency financing soon and once received, will proceed with constructing the sea defence.
The administration is currently in limbo some six weeks after elections as no result has been declared. There are growing questions as to its authority to function and the status of ministers.
The sea defences, located several meters away from the breach stretching from Dantzig to Fairfield, are being battered by waves and can break away at any time. This vulnerable portion puts many farmers and residents at risk even as they are trying to recover from the invasion of saltwater from the last flood in November, last year.
A portion of the earthen embankment that creates a sea defence at Content has been rapidly eroding and with last week above-normal high tides, waves from the Atlantic have been overtopping the dam.
The mangrove fringe and other natural sea defences that were in place have been washed away, leaving just a narrow dam, which is now exposed and rapidly eroding. At daily high tides, the murky waters of the Atlantic Ocean could be seen spilling over the earthen dam.
De-facto Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson had said that his ministry has reached out to the Ministry of Agriculture’s National Drainage and Irrigation Authority requesting that they construct an earthen dam around the community in a bid to limit any possible flooding.
Patterson had explained that the plan of the project at Content, is to construct a rip-rap similar to what was done between the breach at Dantzig and Fairfield. New breaches develop easily, he said, before pointing out that as one area is fixed, the water diverts and undermines other weak sections of the defence, thereby exposing it to rapid erosion. Workers from BK International, one of the contracted companies hired to execute emergency works on the breaches between Dantzig and Fairfield, had diverted some materials towards the site where a new breach could possibly occur.
It was observed that despite this action, the current stretch still remains extremely vulnerable and in urgent need of immediate works to repair the sea defence. The Ministry of Public Infrastructure in a statement last year had informed that the Mahaicony sea defences have been impacted by the cyclic erosion of the foreshore and natural depletion of the mangrove forest, which have caused the breaches along the coast.
“The shoreline between Fairfield and Dantzig has become exposed to intense wave impact causing significant overtopping to occur in a number of sections and some sections of the embankment were completely breached during the last spring tide period,” the statement added.
