The result of neglect and lawlessness

Sep 14, 2010 Editorial

The recent excessively high spring tides have brought home the grim reality that coastal Guyana is under siege. Most of the affected people reported that in more than four decades they never saw the water so high in their yards and in their farming cultivations.
Indeed ever since the great floods of 2005, many people, especially those who lived along the river banks and on the Atlantic shore saw more water than they ever did. Homes were flooded; people had to wade through water sometimes knee deep to get to the roadways and in some cases, motorists had to drive through a lot of water that had flooded roadways, transforming them into mini lakes and rivers.
Some attribute this phenomenon to global warming that threatens rising sea levels and which will be detrimental to low-lying islands and states. Guyana, with its coastline being some two meters behind sea level and which depends on seawalls and revetments to keep out the sea and the ocean, is prone to any disaster.
However, there are those who say that the recent excessive high tides are nothing but a cyclical phenomenon, and that this has happened some time in the past. They say that if one were to check the records one would notice similar flooding due to excessive high tides in the past.
Whatever the cause for the excessive high tides, it is clear that our administrators never set about catering for problems. They allowed the infrastructure to collapse. Some time in the past the people who paid close attention to sea and river defences recognised the wisdom in digging façade drains along the river defences.
In low-lying coastal areas there were similar façade drains to capture water that would have flown into the residential communities from the Atlantic Ocean after it had breached the defences. These drains would capture the water and channel it away from the land.
When the high tides came last week the people in the affected areas found that the façade drains had disappeared. They were all filled with vegetation through neglect. At Bagotstown, people had actually constructed homes where these drains were because they could not see the need for them. When the tides poured over the sea dams and through whatever breaches were created there was nothing to trap the excess water.
It is the same with the various drainage canals in many locations. It is no secret that most of these canals are weed-choked and overgrown to the point that they are meaningless. From time to time the City Council would attempt to dredge these outfall channels but would always encounter problems. The very lawlessness that allowed these outfall channels and façade drains to be blocked allowed people to erect dwellings along the outfall channels so that drain clearing machinery cannot any longer operate in these locations.
Indeed, the law abiding few would insist that the squatters should be removed so that any work could be undertaken. However, this is easier said than done. The squatters have become entrenched and when efforts are made to remove them it is as if people are challenging the bona fide rights of these people.
Recently, the people in West Ruimveldt found support in some social elements who readily attributed political motives to what is a basic health and sanitation issue—an issue that should see the protection of the very people who are blocking the exercise.
It is the same everywhere. It was so in Tucville, in North Ruimveldt and in other parts of the city. The people took possession of the various plots of reserve to the detriment of any future drainage exercise and any action to prevent what happened to the people in the riverain communities when the façade drains all but disappeared.
These things should never happen but they do because we simply do not monitor situations any more until disaster threatens. We turn a blind eye to irregularities and we condone lawlessness once it is not accompanied by violence.
There was a brouhaha when City Hall clamped down on wanton pavement vending. In the end, the City Council prevailed but as expected it is allowing a gradual return to the lawlessness that spawned its initial action.
So we return to the likelihood of perpetual flooding and the absence of relief drains. When will the situation be corrected?

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