Georgetown: Government has invested billions of dollars in rebuilding the country’s drainage and irrigation (D&I) infrastructure, but now, the focus is on expanding the infrastructure to deal with the challenges of climate change.
Minister in the Ministry of Agriculture Alli Baksh noted that the local drainage system fell into disrepair, years before government took office, but upon taking on the duties, government quickly realised that interventions had to be made to save the country’s agriculture. He was joined on the programme by Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA), Lionel Wordsworth.
The D&I system in Guyana was built over 150 years ago for agricultural purposes (producing sugar and then rice). It was a state of neglect 35 years ago, and as the years went by, the situation got worse, Wordsworth explained.
“What happened is that many infrastructure like sluices, and canals were sold, some pumps were also vandalised (and sold for parts) and there was not a programme of maintaining or expanding the drainage system,” he said.
Government’s D&I programme has been in place now for some 15 years. Wordsworth noted that in addressing the issue of rebuilding D&I, government reformulated the whole sector and critically set up the NDIA, to guide and formulate the programmes and policies, for correcting the past failures.
“We developed many programmes to resuscitate many of the abandoned structures. Some of them we could not even get back because some channels had properties (building structures) on them,” Wordsworth noted.
He pointed out that over the past five years, the NDIA’s current D&I programme, has gone beyond the goal of just rebuilding, and is now instead focused on creating and installing the kind of D&I infrastructure critical to the country combating and adapting to the effect of climate change (prolonged rainfall and dry period).
Minister Baksh, however noted that one of the biggest challenges in this area, has been faced along the foreshore, whereby due to the local coastline, the NDIA has been facing special challenges such as the accretion of mud in and around the outfall and sea sluices.
This has proven to be a very costly exercise, “but that is the only way, we can keep these channels flowing all the time and have more inward security,” Minister Baksh said.
Government is working to build up the shoreline, and is also using groynes, excavators and barges to keep the sluices clear. “Certainly in the future, we will have to create new groynes, in some of these areas, where we have these sluices,” the Minister explained.
Wordsworth, also speaking of challenges faced along the foreshore noted that these have minimised the NDIA’s ability to effect drainage by gravity, and at times to open sluice gates.
He pointed out that, when this happens, the land cannot therefore be drained by sluices and instead has to be excavated by pumps. He explained that these are in most cases electrical and filtered pumps, and there is a huge cost to that, but that the effort cannot be stopped.
“If you are to sustain a proper and acceptable service of drainage that has to continue and expand… we require US $1B near-term investment to improve drainage services along the coast,” he said.
The NDIA, CEO also noted the other challenges experienced over the years in dealing with the country’s response to climate change. He recalled the devastating flood in 2005, and the special programme that had to be implemented, with a focus on the East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC) adaptation project.
Analytical studies were done, resulting in several intervention projects that focused on upgrading the conservancy and its complementing drainage infrastructure to cope with the kind of rainfall experienced in 2005. Out of this, the huge Hope Canal Project was conceptualised. With its, structural components completed, this intervention, is set to be operationalised, this year. It will reduce the pressure on the EDWC, if the integrity of that structure is ever threatened.
Wordsworth also noted that NDIA also faced challenges of financing. He noted that in agricultural areas, “the D&I is not always there, revenue collection is not at a desired level so it always poses a huge challenge for local government to fund these activities.”
Government has had much success in D&I sector, cognisant of the fact that it remains key to the expansion of the entire agriculture sector. In this regard, in 2014 alone, government’s intervention, saw 1,200 cu sec added to the pumping capacity. This increase in capacity created the means that the country can now pump an additional 30 million gallons of water per hour. In the first quarter of 2015, the authority is expected to further increase its capacity for drainage by almost the same quantity.
It should be noted that while pumped drainage is undertaken in areas where there are very high foreshore conditions or there is a small window to effect gravity drainage, among other evaluated boundary conditions, the authority is currently constructing drainage sluices.
In this regard, the authority is at present putting in drainage sluices at Profit, Bagotville, La Grange, Black Bush Polder, Bengal, Eversham, and Number 43 village, among other areas.
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