Monticello residents want flooding issues addressed

For more than 40 years, whenever there is a forecast of rain, residents of Hoose Avenue in Monticello worry about the double dilemma of improper drainage.

Residents of the St Catherine community said the avenue needs urgent attention as their plight worsens with each passing shower.

“The sort of flooding that we have experienced on this road doesn’t reflect the type of investment which we have made down here,” said Keaton Gordon, who has lived there since 1997. “I have never seen any work done on this road.”

Gordon, a former president of the Hoose Avenue Citizens’ Association, said urgent attention is required to address the crisis.

“I have constantly prayed that the rain don’t come heavy. If that happens, my family suffers from water running through the yard inside the house,” Breanna Moran told The Gleaner.

Donovan Matthews said the nub of the flooding woe is the small drain that cannot manage the run-off.

His own yard was inundated just over a week ago. Householders say that shingle has occasionally been delivered to the site but their hopes have been dashed with the road not being paved.

As a result, the heavy run-off continues to erode the topsoil and gravel.

Returning resident Omar Adams concurred with the other views.

“I came here and saw it like this, and simply, I want it fixed,” Adams said.

Councillor Patricia Harris said that oversight of the scheme is yet to be turned over to the St Catherine Municipal Corporation, but she sought to assure that she was still lobbying for the community to be regularised.