Construction on Hope/Dochfour Canal

Feb 08, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,

In an Article which appeared in Kaieteur News of January 29, Agriculture Minister, Robert Persaud announced that construction on the Hope/Dochfour Canal is expected to start in late February. His statement has come at a time when a number of technical and financial issues for the project remain unresolved and will have to be addressed before any construction could begin.

In July 2009 a Ministry of Agriculture financed consultancy study for the Canal recommended two options for relieving flood waters from the East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC).

The recommended option by the consultants, a deep outfall channel with a low level sluice was apparently not accepted and the Ministry decided to proceed with the second option with an optimum discharge capacity of 62.1 m3/s, a flow derived from model studies.

At his news conference, the Minister stated that, “however, with the construction of the new canal the flood situation in these areas is expected to cease as excess water from the EDWC will be released into the new canal”.

The consultants clearly stated in their report that the proposed canal by itself cannot provide adequate relief of flood waters from the EDWC and release of flood waters through the Lama and Maduni sluices into the Mahaica River will have to continue to avoid anticipated flood risks.

The stated discharge for the canal needs further refinement to reflect flows under conditions when the canal is partially silted with sediment and weeds and discharging at various tidal levels through a partially silted outfall channel.

Under these circumstances reduced flows (m3/s) and hence the least volume of flood water which could be discharged from the EDWC when it is in flood mode during a 24-hour cycle would have given the Minister a better understanding of the canal’s limitations to discharge flood water rather than under ideal conditions which has been portrayed and will give distorted flow expectations.

C. Sohan