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Review the Hope Canal project

Dec 21, 2011 Letters

 

Dear Editor,
Reference to an article in the newspapers of 20th December 2011 concerning the Hope canal which at this time is only 10 per cent complete, the technical reasons why this project was conceived was long challenged by the opposition. This would be a good time to stop the project, until all of the alternatives, including the completion of the MMA scheme, is explored completely.
There are many highly qualified civil engineers with vast experience in Hydraulics such as Charles Sohan and Malcolm Ali who question the feasibility of this expensive alternative to controlling the East Demerara water Conservancy [EDWC] levels.
The current level of the Conservancy is 58 GD. B.K. Tiwarie was supposed to raise it to 62 GD to serve the estates and the rice farmers in the El Nino years. However, the conservancy is still incapable of conserving at that level and continues to function at 58 GD.
We are committing a violation of a cardinal rule of administration in this Hope Canal project, since our consultants are also our contractors! It is a clear conflict of interest.
We do not know if this Hope relief will be capable of working at the anticipated 62 GD levels which is what we want the EDWC to be capable of holding so that it can function in our interest in the El Nino dry years.  Indeed,  we need to conserve water at a much higher level in the EDWC and so any budgetary allocation to this project in 2012 should not be passed until we get all of the facts.
We should also ask what the total cost has been to rectify the numerous problems associated with the conservancy dam. The corrective works were executed mostly by hand using mud filled plastic bags after we paid $400 million to raise it. The numerous problems we ended up with because the job was not done properly was a waste of taxpayers’ money.
The floods of 2004 and 2005 are good examples.
Tony Vieira

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