Professional engineers say the lack of maintenance of the drainage infrastructure is to blame for continued stagnant water along the East Coast and in South Georgetown. While several areas have seen water drain off, there are other communities that despite a brief respite in the rainfall are not seeing any relief. Melvin Sankies, President of the Guyana Association of Professional Engineers (GAPE) believes there must have been a breach of the Lamaha Conservancy and a crown dam close to it. He said he has spoken with a fellow engineer about his suspicions and is awaiting confirmation. "There is no doubt there has been a breach to the crown dam, which has affected areas such as Enterprise." Sankies said there needs to be a survey done by professionals to assess the situation and come up with a short-term and long-term solution. He also said that final year students at the University of Guyana (UG) who are assigned to do projects on drainage could not get any information out of the Hydrometeorological Division. "There must be better co-operation between the government, the private sector and UG so that institution can do its work." A retired engineer who was responsible for servicing drainage pumps and technical services for Guysuco on the East Coast has said that before nationalisation, sluices such as the one close to the Ruimveldt Police Station were used to drain water into the Demerara River. At that time he said the canals were clear and water was diverted, using all the interconnected waterways, into the river. Providing that the sluices and canals were in good working order half the water from the East Coast could have been released. He recalled two years ago, "I had warned my colleagues to get the canals activated because the time would come when the East Coast would need to be drained." There were links to bring water through South, he said. He said politics sometimes affected engineers working on essential services such as desilting canals. He said at one time politicians had stopped his brother who is also an engineer from cleaning a critical canal. And during drainage work at Mon Repos a politician along with the regional chairman came and demanded to have the services of the drag line he was using. But he told them that he was doing work which was saving the lives on the coast. "Georgetown is not properly engineered... people do not realise where water should be drained," he said, "It is stupid to put water in South (Ruimveldt) to be drained at Liliendaal." He noted that the water in South should be drained through the sluices at Meadow Bank but the canals leading there are blocked with weeds. The sluices there are begging for water, he said. "I am so annoyed and fed up... but a lot of times I have told them about the drainage. All the trenches are blocked with weeds. We don't need a rocket scientist to say what the problem is. The flooding is understandable but not to have people living in it. "The East Coast is linked to LBI where there are drainage systems to get water off the front lands. Drainage pumps were set up to drain the front end but they must drain the back before clearing the front. If you do a survey of the square miles at the back into which the water must drain one would see that one of the obvious things to do would be just to tickle some of the canals to get the water in the canals running. There is not always the need for a dragline. You can't not look at the sluices everyday, because every high tide would bring in sling, mud and silt that must be moved right away. You could just tickle the sluice to let the water rush out which would wash the sluice out," he said. "The problem is our own fault. On the estate the sluices and pumps are maintained in the dry and wet weather. So it is the build up of bad practices over the years that is coming back to confront us as a monster. Georgetown is slackness, it needs sluices because it's going to take a hell of a long time to pump water off." The whole system was designed for the canals to drain water off of the backlands so, "every time I see weeds in the canals in South it grieves me." He recalled that Phillip Allsop former Chief Hydraulic Engineer was mostly correct in his article about the situation. He referred to Allsop's words on the Harbour Bridge and agreed that it restricts the flow of water and aggravates siltation, But he added, "This is not the main problem. Every high tide brings in mud and sand. This happens on a daily basis therefore persons should be paid to look at the sluices everyday. The estates used to pay people to watch at the sluices everyday and find solutions. That man only has to make one prompt decision per year and he can save millions. People may want to think that these men who once lived in houses next to the sluices were wasting time but they are essential. All these positions can provide jobs for people who need them." Another senior engineer who preferred to remain anonymous said the cause of the floods stemmed from the conservancy overtopping and bad drainage. He estimated that there were some eight to ten sluices draining Georgetown in the early 19th century. He said what happens now is that these are currently not functioning as they should; the storage capacity for water has been reduced; the habits of the people throwing food boxes in the drains, siltation and the maintenance of drains are also to blame. The engineer noted that people are now living where water was stored on land just outside Kitty such as Sophia. But noted there were no new canals to facilitate the growth. "Students' reports have told me that there has been a large volume of storage capacity lost by the filling of canals." The engineer who lives in South Ruimveldt said that water is flowing into the basin from another source. "Part of the immediate problem arises from roads in several areas acting as drains because of a lack of maintenance and understanding. The verges are higher than the roads but in the old days every hundred yards or so holes were placed to let the water drain into the roadside drains." "They should be doing what was done in the past; call in professional engineers and let them do the job. The President and ministers should not be walking around the place talking. Let the engineers do the job and then 'buse them," he asserted. In addition there is no data coming from the Hydrometeorological Division for students. Data should be freely given to students studying whether pumps at Liliendaal could drain Georgetown. He said that the pumps such as those at Liliendaal should be taking water off out of the Industry and Turkeyen areas. He suggested the necessity to put in some more pumping stations. "We need data, plans, financial aid for students and hydrometeorological information but the government is not prepared to give free data. They must use students at UG to do studies of this area." Walter Willis, Technical Advisor in the Ministry of Public Works said he would reserve his comments until he has made a deeper assessment of the situation. Charles Ceres, Head of Ground
Structure Engineering has said, "I am disappointed by the
level in response. I get the sense that the infrastructure was
not designed for that level of rainfall. 100% efficiency has not
been the case. Drainage and Irrigation is not my area and not
something I would want to comment on but I think they should be
mobilizing resources to get help to these persons."
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