Fear of flooding

Top of the list is the sheer beauty of the landscape — the last week has seen the deep green of the dramatic Northern Range speckled by warm colour as the poui trees came into bloom.

A moment’s reflection on how well endowed this handkerchief of earth is should sober up anyone depressed by the chaos and wilful ignorance. But in the next breath you could be downcast again to consider the death wish we harbour. We do not really deserve to be custodians of the precious rivers, mangroves, seas, valleys, mountains and fertile earth.

We have abused them all so that instead of being able to nurture us they can do us harm.

Too few people anywhere are troubled by the spectre of global warming, by rising levels and hotter temperatures of the seas, the destruction of marine life and erratic weather.

Imagining how to protect my house from roof-lifting winds and driving, torrential rain is never too far from my mind now that the rainy season is upon us. And this, my most recent paranoia, is acute because I live in the foothills of the Northern Range and I witness the rapid disappearance of the cooling, green hill cover as bright coloured concrete houses smother the land, marching compulsively down from the very top.

I wonder where is the rain runoff going to find a path, except down to where I live? The drainage system is totally inadequate for the amount of water that will not now be absorbed by the hillside.

Some months ago after a heavy rain shower the amount of brown water flowing past my gate, straight down from the hills, where the roadways had become riverbeds, was scary. Torrents of water pressed against my electric gates, small rivers of it escaping under the gates and promising to flood my driveway. Fortunately, the drain from my front garden into a nearby gully was sufficiently big to cope.

My newest fear will be tested for its reasonableness in the coming months. Will the volume of water in the street increase in line with the high number of smart new hillside dwellings? Will my gates be strong enough to withstand the heavier volume of runoff pressing to get in? What happens if the gates can’t cope? My house is too low-lying to escape serious damage in the event of a flood, so should I make the egress to the gully wider? But what happens if the gully floods back into my yard? Should I get sandbags, and where to store them? These are real issues.

The house was never flooded in its very long life but everything around it has changed so one cannot be complacent, yet it is not right that citizens should be facing a possible man-made disaster when we should have environmental laws and practice to protect all of us.

If it were my great misfortune to be flooded, could I get redress from those who caused it: the EMA and the unthinking house builders? Stupid question! It is a hallmark of the unjustness that we face.

I am thrilled that our main watercourses are being dredged and cleaned up in advance of the stillto- come seasonal downpours.

That, however, is a small plaster on a massive wound. I doubt that an environmental impact survey was done to ascertain if the St Ann’s river could actually cope with the alarming amount of new development in the hillside areas that feed water into it? One possible useful outcome from the property tax could be a fund f o r d a m - age to private property from S t a t e s l a c k - ness.