Drainage nightmare - Mandeville flooding after least bit of rain

It is deemed the business centre of Manchester but after a little rainfall it is a swimming pool for the mentally unstable and a river for motorists and pedestrians.

For years, the flooding on Ward Avenue in Mandeville has affected businesses and frustrated those who need to travel the route.

One would think that with all the talk and the efforts to fix the problem over the years, this nightmare would become a thing of the past, but it seems the problem will always be with the residents of Mandeville.

"The water is not coming off the road at a speed that we want it to ... the (inlet) that is right beside Brumalia (Hardware) is too small and the design is being looked at as we speak," said Mayor of Mandeville Donovan Mitchell.

He said the problem is being compounded, as a resident who had agreed to allow the council to track the water through his property has changed his mind.

"The other two areas that we could literally use are the properties through First Global or CASCO, and they are not available at the moment ... what we intend to do is to put in another inlet beside Brumalia House and pipe the water from there and take across anyone of those properties over to Manchester Club," added Mitchell.

The mayor, who was speaking at a recent stakeholders meeting, added, "If we are able to do that then the water will be on one side of the roadway ... once that is done, then we would be 90 per cent ahead in solving the situation, and after that we will do some reservicing of the area"

He said that funding has been allocated from the National Works Agency (NWA) and the municipal corporation.

But Mitchell was adamant that the NWA has to do more as several sections of the town experience flooding regularly.

"All the water from the Seventh-day Adventist Church runs there (Caledonia Road), and even though the church is guttered the water still runs on the main road, and those are the kind of problems we have along the roadways because NWA has to see to the development aspect of things.

"Some of them sit in Kingston and they don't even come up to see what is happening. They don't come out and look, and that is the problem we have in the town," charged Mitchell.

He argued that what the town really need is another area to "remove some of the water because once we have rains we will always have a problem ... in Mandeville."