Completion of $78M sluice at Buxton suffers year-long delay

Dec 06, 2013 News

Completion of the $78M sluice being constructed at Buxton, East Coast Demerara has been delayed over one year, with shortage of timber piling and poor weather conditions blamed.
Construction of the sluice commenced in November 2011 and had one-year duration. The project is undertaken by Colin Talbot Contracting Services.
This is according to Lionel Wordsworth, Chief Executive Officer of the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA), who yesterday revealed some of the reasons for the delay.
According to Wordsworth, the contractor was unable to access timber piling for six weeks from July 18, 2012 to August 31, 2012 since there was a shortage.
But the timber tanking piles were unable to penetrate the soil strata within the footprint of the structure and the consultant, E&A Consultant, recommended driving steel sheet piles, which were later sourced.
“Because of the low demand and high cost for these steel sheet piles, local companies don’t readily have them in stock. These had to be sourced externally which took some time,” he added.
Another setback was that the foreshore did not allow for deep penetration of the strata to accommodate a coffer dam for the construction of the northern section of the structure north of the sea defence.
As such advice was sought from Sea Defence Department and NDIA is concluding the connection of the sluice to the sea defence, which will see the completion of the project.
In addition, poor weather conditions in September 2012 prevented the pouring of concrete for the foundation. However, this was rectified by the construction of an access road.
He noted that the communities of Buxton and Friendship were designed to drain via a pump- sluice combination, whereby a fixed pump empties the water into a basin which drains via a sluice.
However, the existing sluice has a flume/discharge box deep below the seawall which suffers from heavy siltation thereby not allowing the basin to drain. As such, NDIA placed a mobile pump to drain the discharge basin, he noted.
“The new sluice being built is designed with a vertical lift gate to allow for free flow discharge in an open channel arrangement from the high level pump discharge basin onto the foreshore and will not suffer from foreshore accretion. The new sluice will provide a more efficient and reliable discharge of water from the drainage system,” Wordsworth said.

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Completion of $78M sluice at Buxton suffers year-long delay

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