RAIN, RAIN GO AWAY!
November 28, 2013, By KNews, Filed Under Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom, Source
There was no escaping what took place yesterday. While most of the country lay in their beds dreaming of a dry Christmas, the clouds belched open like a burst water main and drenched the coastland with an unbelievable five inches of rainfall.
This was no ordinary downpour. It was the most intense period of rainfall that Guyana has ever experienced, perhaps even more intense that the monsoons of 2005 which inflicted destruction of families and on the economy of the country, wiping out over 40 per cent of the country’s agricultural Gross Domestic Product.
The losses this time will be far less because Guyana was better prepared this time. But there were significant losses suffered by households because of yesterday’s heavy rainfall.
Many people were angry about what happened and the usual blame game began. The greatest blame was showered on the country’s residential drainage system which remains in a dismal state, a development that goes back to the seventies when municipal services went into serious decline from which it has never recovered.
However, even if all the drains and alleyways were cleared of weeds, plastic bottles and Styrofoam boxes, even if the water flowed as freely as the cascading Kaieteur Falls, there would still have been flooding in Guyana.
The reason is simple. The downpour that was experienced yesterday was too intense over a short period. Over five inches of rain was dumped on the coastland over a period of six hours. There was no way in which such a situation flooding, and extensive flooding at that could have been avoided.
Even with a drainage system that is not compromised, the flatness of the coast land restricts gravity flow and limits it to a situation akin to running molasses. With the drainage system at its best, the coastland was never able to take off more than three inches of rainfall over a twenty-four-hour period, much less five inches over a period of six hours.
There has always been accumulation on the land whenever the rainy season comes. This is why most of the houses in the old days were built on stilts.They were so constructed because the drainage system in Guyana was primarily designed for the plantation and could not take off more than three inches over a one-day period.
With a highly compromised drainage system, it is now impossible for more than two inches of water to be drained over an eight-hour period, even with the pumps and improved kokers that have been constructed. Thus, once the rainfall exceeds two inches flooding will occur. But like in the past, the water will eventually pull off the land.
People in Guyana are however, enjoying higher standards of living and because they are driving fancy vehicles and living in posh homes, they feel that there must be something radically wrong that every time there is a heavy downpour there is flooding.
The flooding from the heavy downpours however cannot be totally avoided once a certain threshold of rainfall is surpassed. But what is compounding the agonies of citizens of Guyana and particularly Georgetown is that the hold capacity of the drainage canals is far less than it used to be.
As a result the trenches are holding far less water and are thus overtopping after a mere few inches of rainfall.
For a very long time, the major canals that drain the greater portion of Georgetown have not been de-silted. There are some canals that are cleaned and this usually involves extracting the heavy overgrowth of weeds but this exercise does not significantly increasing the holding capacity of these drainage canals.
In other cases, canals cannot be cleaned. Squatters have taken up resident on the banks and dams of these canals with the effect that the heavy growth of weeds that clog these vital drainage systems cannot even be removed much less address the heavy siltation.
Squatters defecate or throw their filth into these major drainage canals and it sinks to the bottom where it forms a cake-like layer. Unless this situation changes, one day, perhaps sooner than later, there is going to be a cholera outbreak from which the majority of citizens will not recover.
The second major complicating factor is the state of most of our outfalls. These outfalls are silted. They need to be dredged so as to increase the removal of floodwaters when the kokers are opened.
That will require a significant investment but there are short-term measures similar to what was employed during the 2005 floods, which can be implemented to improve the flow of water from the canals into the rivers.
The third and perhaps most important complicating factor is the lack of routine maintenance. That has been something that has been absent from all areas of public administration since the British left and unless Guyana returns to the system of planned and routine maintenance, then sustained improvement in drainage should not be expected.