Mayor says dredging needed to prevent flooding in Lucea Harbour
Published:Tuesday | October 25, 2022 | 12:09 AMBryan Miller/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Amid extensive flooding, land slippages, and the resulting inconveniences due to continuous rain in Hanover, Lucea Mayor Sheridan Samuels says that the only way to avoid flooding in the rural town is to dredge or desilt the harbour.
The latest instance of flooding was on Friday of last week when the Venture gutter that runs across Bustamante Square could not handle the volume of water that gushed down the waterway.
Many residents of Lucea expressed surprise at the volume of water, which they said was unusual. The flooding was followed by a massive land slippage a day later in the Riley Bridge area of the town, where a similar landslippage had taken place a few months earlier.
“Luckily for us, and based on the mitigation work that we (at the HMC) have been doing, the Riley River did not overflow its banks this time around. In terms of the other areas, for the many years that I have been in Lucea, I have never seen that volume of water that flowed in the Venture gutter,” stated Samuels, who was born and raised in Lucea.
The mayor explained that the Venture gutter was free of debris but just could not handle the volume of water that flowed during the last bout of rainfall.
Acting chief executive officer of the Hanover Municipal Corporation (HMC), Romeo Daley, told The Gleaner that no reports had come in about damage to infrastructure or goods, arguing that because of the clean state of the drain, the water ran off quickly.
“We have engaged the National Works Agency to deal with the land slippage and to create clearance for at least one lane of traffic in that area. And with respect to the flooding, once the rains subsided within five to 10 minutes, the water ran off because it was not a matter that the drain was blocked. It was just an unusual volume of water,” he said.
Daley argued that the parish’s disaster preparedness infrastructure is up and running, with stocks of equipment and emergency goods in place, along with 55 emergency shelters and managers, in the event of any unforeseen situation.
According to Samuels, based on discussions he has held with the chief engineering officer of the HMC, Dwayne Johnson, Lucea Harbour is badly in need of dredging so as to facilitate the run-off of water.
“Speaking with our chief engineering officer, we realised that the sea itself is way above the outlet of the Venture gutter, so it means that the harbour needs to be desilted. I do not know when that will happen because that is going to take a lot of money,” he stated.
He said that the HMC is awaiting approval to utilise some of its Special Grant for Repairs (SGR) to continue the extensive drain-cleaning programme that had been implemented as a preventive measure.
Samuels described the need to desilt the harbour as a major challenge that will require collaboration between agents at both local and central government.
“But that is where we are now. If we do not get that done (desilting) then we are going to be constantly having this flooding of the town (Lucea) because it now makes the town below the sea level, so as a result, every time rain falls we are going to be flooded because the water is not running off freely enough,” he stated.