Another month, another flood

Jan 12, 2014 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

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Every month, there is a major flood somewhere in Guyana.
The year 2013 opened with flooding on the East Coast Demerara in January. Floods followed in sections of Kingston, Georgetown, in February; in parts of Uitvlugt on the West Coast Demerara, in March; on the East and West Coast Demerara and the Essequibo Coast in April; at Den Amstel on the West Coast Demerara, in June; in Albouystown, Georgetown, in July; on the East Bank Demerara, in August; at Tuschen, once again on the West Coast Demerara, in September; again in Albouystown, Georgetown, in October and in many parts of Georgetown and elsewhere, in November.
The hinterland was not spared. Floods affected Bartica in the Cuyuni-Mazaruni Region and St Ignatius in the Rupununi Region, in May and in the Pomeroon-Supenaam Region in December.
Monthly flooding incurs incalculable losses in terms of the destruction of farms, death of livestock and damage to homes, household goods and domestic and agricultural equipment. Farmlands are affected by massive flooding which destroys cultivated areas.
The endless, inevitable, monthly cycle of floods still continues nine years after the notorious “Great Flood” of January 2005. Floods, from 1988 to 2006, affected 965,000 persons and resulted in more than US$663M in economic damage, according to an Inter-American Development Bank study. The ‘Great Flood’ reportedly affected 25 per cent of the national population and caused economic losses equivalent to 60 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for that year.
The People’s Progressive Party Civic administration never conducted an inquiry into that catastrophe and its salutary lessons seem not to have been learnt. Since the ‘Great Flood,’ the administration has been on a spending spree, squandering billions on World Cup cricket, hosting the Caribbean Festival of the Arts (Carifesta) and building a five-star hotel and other prestige projects while neglecting the infrastructure needed to protect the coast from flooding.
It is a well-known fact that Guyana’s coastal zone lies near or below sea level. The rate of sea-level rise in the Caribbean is predicted to be five times greater than the world’s average, according to the IDB study. This means that sea-level rise resulting from global warming could “significantly increase disaster risk in Guyana to levels that threaten the physical and economic viability of the coastal zone.”
The study points out, further, that “a result of the dynamic interplay between high tides, high rainfall levels and a network of drainage and irrigation canals, conservancy dams and sluices designed to support agriculture, the coastland, as well as riverine areas and some low-lying parts of the hinterland, are at high risk to flooding.”
The coastland is dissected by the estuaries of numerous rivers, creeks and canals where the outfall channels are periodically blocked by ‘sling mud’ which constantly moves along the coastline. Coastal towns and villages were built on old cotton and sugar plantations which used to possess thousands of kilometres of drainage canals discharging water through these outfall channels into the rivers or the ocean.
This network included dams and kokers which had to be regularly repaired and which required the periodic dredging of the outfalls and estuaries of several rivers, including the Berbice, Demerara, Mahaica and Pomeroon. Siltation accumulates without this dredging, causing flooding in farms and settlements. Sea defences also require continuous vigilance and maintenance as breaches or overtopping have frequently contributed to flooding.
Drainage canals must be maintained. They rarely have concrete walls and as a result, there is continuous erosion of the banks and growth of vegetation such as the formidable moko-moko, water hyacinth wild eddo and other water weeds. Canals are often clogged with garbage, silt, sand or builders’ waste. The ubiquitous canal system has become a victim of the extensive use of concrete surfaces in yards and public places, the deliberate obliteration of canals to facilitate construction, sprawling new housing schemes and squatter settlements and of careless solid waste management.
The damaging effects and frequent occurrence of flooding in this country demand more serious attention from the government than the usual, annual ad hocery and phony expressions of concern for the victims. The PPPC administration needs to promulgate a National Flood Control Master Plan that must comprehend the consequences of climate change that are so evident to everyone else everywhere around the world today.
The proposed Plan must be capable of anticipating the monthly cycle of flooding and of notifying citizens early of the onset of extreme weather and the threat of flooding. The Plan must strengthen disaster risk management agencies and maintain sea defence and flood protection infrastructure. The Plan, most of all, must embody a strategy to protect lives and property from the consequences of the devastating floods of the sort that have affected our country over the past decade.

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