Engineers from the Ministry of Public Works along with Minister Juan Edghill on Saturday assessed sea defences in vulnerable communities and the loss of mangroves at Mahaicony has been seen as a major challenge.
During the visits to Essex Concord, Mahaicony, along the shoreline to Fairfield, and in Lonsdale and Sisters Village, Berbice, the Public Works Minister said government will continue to put measures in place to ensure citizens living in communities in close proximity to the sea are not severely impacted.
As a result of powerful erosive waves, Edghill stated that along the Mahaicony foreshore mature mangroves are being lost at a significant rate.
“With the movement of mud, climate change, weather patterns and everything else, we are losing a significant number of mangroves in this section. Once the mangroves are removed, the dam that we are standing on becomes compromised, and once this dam is breached, the water is all the way in, whether at farmers, poultry farmers or households,” he explained in a Department of Public Information (DPI) report.
The Mahaicony stretch of sea defence has been breached on several occasions between 2018 and 2020. The flash flooding during above normal high tides resulted in days of discomfort to families and loss of livelihoods. Farmlands were inundated for days and due to the salinity of the land after the water receded, farmers were unable to cultivate it.
Since then, Edghill explained that they have completed over six kilometres of reinforced sea defence using boulders.
“Based on the understanding that I have, we have already done six kilometres, from Dantzig, Mahaicony coming all the way back to Fairfield. As the work continues, we are now in the seven-kilometre zone. But we are not asking to do an entire kilometre right now. It will be just about 350-400 metres and we will fill in the gaps as we go along,” he added.
Meanwhile, Senior Engineer of the ministry’s River and Sea Defence Department, Jermaine Braithwaite who also accompanied the team on the site visits explained that by assessing what is taking place on the foreshore, the technical teams can effectively plan how they will reinforce the threatened areas.
“With the resources that the ministry has allocated, we have to target those areas. What we want to continue to do here at Mahaicony, and what the sea defence department has been doing over the last two years, is to implement ahead of the rate of depletion of the mangrove,” he stated in a DPI report.
Brathwaite went on to state they are currently in “discussions, and the procurement and financial needs were brought to the attention of the minister, so that we can have an additional set of contracts initiated within this stretch.”
Based on the assessments, Braithwaite said from their projections, the erosion will continue to progress west, towards the Mahaica river mouth, and at some point, we may start to see a change in the dynamic of the shoreline.”
Edghill was accompanied by the Ministry’s Sea and River Defence Manager, Kevin Samad, Project Manager – Sea and River Defence, Braithwaite and Brigadier Gary Beaton, Chair of the Sea and River Defence Board.
Some $5B was allocated in the 2022 budget for river and sea defence measures. The amount was earmarked for the “construction, rehabilitation and maintenance of sea and river defence infrastructure in areas including Dantzig, Prospect, Content, Fairfield, Zealand, Cane Garden, Uitvlugt, Anna Catherina, No. 63 Beach, Manila, and Bygeval”.
