Latest update April 24th, 2024 12:59 AM
Mar 01, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
The weather forecast for yesterday predicted that we would have had about 35mm or just under one and a half inches of rainfall. The actual rain that descended on the country is likely to be many times this amount.
It rained cats and dogs. In many areas, the water levels are high in the canals and on the land.
Eventually the water will drain, but how quick depends on how much more rain there is. People have grown accustomed to the drill, but the economic cost of the accumulation of water on the land is high.
A few weeks ago, water had to be released into the Mahaicony and Mahaica areas after two days of rainfall.
The problem is therefore not just the excessive rainfall. It is also the storage capacity of the conservancy. That canal may not be storing as much water as it did and this could account for the fact that a mere two days of rainfall results in the discharge of water into other areas so as to prevent a catastrophic breakaway of the very fragile dam of the East Demerara Water Conservancy.
The Venezuelans had done a study of the conservancy. What were its findings? Or is this a State secret whose details cannot be revealed in the same way as the details of some of those deals made in the latter days of the Jagdeo administration which were kept under tabs?
In the interest of satisfying the public that there is no serious problem with the depth of the conservancy, the government should reveal the findings of the studies done by the Venezuelans.
Millions of dollars were spent on the conservancy following the terrible floods of 2005, but yet on no less than three occasions afterwards, there were forced releases of water into the Mahaica and Mahaicony areas so to protect the conservancy dam.
Given the rainfall that is occurring at present, and judging from past experience, it needs to be asked whether another release is not imminent.
We were told that part of the solution to the problem is the building of a relief channel at Hope to complement the two relief channels through which water is released from the conservancy into the Demerara River.
Building a new release canal makes sense, because of the length of the conservancy. As has been shown over and over, the discharge of water at Land of Canaan and Kofi do not appreciably affect the water levels at the eastern extremities of the conservancy, and this is due to the length of the canal. The same problem exists in the Canals Polder, where immediate relief is not felt after the sluices are opened at the head of the polders.
The decision of the government to construct another outlet to allow for the release of water from the conservancy was therefore a step in the right direction. There may be questions over the cost, but there is no way that the country should continue to have releases only through the Demerara River, and especially if the storage capacity of the conservancy has been seriously reduced.
The downside of building the canal is that the government is only addressing drainage. But the primary purpose of the conservancy was for irrigation, to store water for the canefields that lie in front of it. This is the why the conservancy was built, and therefore if the government chooses only to ensure that it can manage water levels so that there is no need for overtopping or forced discharges into other areas, it is ignoring the issue of storage of water.
As such, the storage capacity of the conservancy needs to be known. This is why the government should now make public the various reports into the conservancy, so that the latter issue of storage can be examined, and especially in the context of the millions that were spent over the years on the conservancy.
Since Donald Ramotar became president he has shown a willingness to put some space between himself and his controversial but highly successful predecessor Bharrat Jagdeo. He has brought an end to the controversial contract to build a road to Amaila Falls. And then suddenly after meeting with the grouping putting together the hydroelectric deal, this group was very much willing to sit down and meet with this newspaper.
This was followed this past week with the revelation of bio-energy discussions with a Trinidadian company. That company just yesterday spoke to the media about those deliberations. So under Donald Ramotar there has been a change in attitude at the level of government and at the level of the investors.
Under the Jagdeo regime there was a great deal of arrogance, with public officials being unwilling to provide details of the deals entered into and the investors being very evasive. That attitude is now changing and hopefully the new openness will filter down to the old studies that were done on the conservancy.
In a few days time, it will be the weather that will determine whether further releases have to be made into the Mahaica and Mahaicony areas. For the sake of the persons living along the banks of the creeks in those areas, it is hoped that they do not have to go through that experience again.
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