Earth Today | ‘Maintenance a must’

HEAD OF the Mona GeoInformatics Institute (MGI) Dr Ava Maxam is making the case for deliberate and upfront considerations for maintenance in development projects in Jamaica, to enhance the island’s physical infrastructure, while mitigating damage to the natural environment and preserving lives and livelihoods.

“Without a doubt, maintenance is our main issue,” she said during a recent presentation to a team from The Jamaica National Group, which has launched a comprehensive environmental programme to raise public awareness of good practices, with a focus on reforestation, waste management, water conservation, and energy efficiency.

Jamaica, Maxam said, has a poor track record of maintaining its civil infrastructure, which contributes to disastrous outcomes from, for example, heavy rainfall events. She said better mixing of ‘hard’ engineering solutions with ‘soft’ environmental measures that make maintenance easier is necessary.

“For example, nowadays when we are building coastal roads, there should be soft measures in place. You want to know that your seagrass, coral reefs and mangroves are in place and thriving, along with that coastal road development. It’s not enough to just pave the road or raise it,” she explained.

“We’ve seen where that makes maintenance easier,” Maxam added, noting that seagrass and mangroves help to buffer the shoreline, reducing the level of maintenance required.

LEGISLATION

She also believes that legislating maintenance may be necessary to ensure it is done correctly and consistently.

“It may be [that] our laws need to catch up [by] building in maintenance regulations from the very beginning. It should be part of your sustainability plan. So, if more emphasis is placed on what it will take to maintain these systems, then that will go a far way in making the system last, once it is implemented,” Maxam said.

Using her organisation as reference, she said that MGI, which innovates and deploys software applications for governments and agencies, locally and regionally, insists on entities having a maintenance plan to support any solution provided.

“One of the first things we tell clients is that you have to think of maintenance from system planning stages before we build platforms, or even code. You can’t just think of building something, implement, then expect it to run itself. You have to execute a thorough maintenance strategy immediately on deployment for sustaining that system for the long run,” Maxam said.

She argued that the failure to maintain and expand drainage systems in urban areas has been a major cause of flooding, along with other factors, including the failure to expand the infrastructure to match the increased population and development; poor solid waste disposal habits; and deforestation in the hinterlands around urban centres, including mangrove forest removal.

These factors, Maxam maintained, contribute to the vulnerability of areas such as Port Maria, St Mary, which last February experienced catastrophic flooding during heavy rains, and must be addressed.