Clearing watercourses

Central and Local Government Author-ities should move with dispatch to clear as well as deepen and widen the country’s watercourses where this has not already been done. This is urgently needed to minimise the risk of flooding in low lying areas which could be provoked through the current indiscriminate burning and slashing of hillsides.

Even though this is a process that should have been ongoing since the start of the present dry season, yet today there are watercourses with small trees and other forms of vegetation growing in them, and in which quarried material, discarded household appliances and other debris have been dumped. The need to act on the clearing of the nation’s drains, ravines, streams and rivers is particularly urgent as in all too many cases unthinking quarry operators, householders and those who fell trees have by their clogging of waterways, turned them into disasters waiting to happen. Additionally, the thoughtless dumping of fast food containers and other forms of garbage into canals, which empty into underground drains, in Port-of-Spain and San Fernando for example, will, unless acted upon, lead to needless flooding in Ariapita Avenue, Wrightson Road, South Quay and Lower High Street.

In several instances persons wishing to grow crops and/or to squat on the hillsides of the Northern and Central Ranges have engaged in slashing and burning to facilitate either their farming or the putting up of shacks. The resultant lack of hillside vegetation which would normally impede the flow of rain water will lead to its faster runoff. The varying levels of silt, quarried material and different forms of garbage can severely raise the level of the watercourse, which [the level] under normal conditions would facilitate the free flow of water. In Central Trinidad, in particular, the virtual raising of the level of the Caroni River bed, for example, will result in flood waters rapidly spilling over onto surrounding areas, causing widespread damage to crops, livestock, furniture and appliances and general flooding.

Floods always pose a health threat not only in the immediate neighbourhoods affected but to areas beyond including the effect of food crops becoming contaminated. In addition, with the 2003 rainy season only a handful of weeks away, we should like to urge the Ministry of Health to put its anti-dengue campaign into high gear, in an effort to sensitise the general population of the danger of dengue. It should advise of preventive measures which should be taken to minimise the possibility of an outbreak of dengue.