These last-minute sea defence efforts will have no lasting impact

Dear Editor,

It has been reported in the media that the high tides being experienced along Guyana’s coastland have again flooded and caused extensive damage to several villages and cultivated lands located at Fyrish, Mahaicony, Mahaica, Leguan and elsewhere.

These flood occurrences particularly during the months of October and November are being dealt with as emergency situations by the Sea Defence Board/ Ministry of Public Infrastructures (SDB/MoPI) as they scramble to mobilize equipment and materials such as boulders to temporarily build earthen embankments with a rock armour to seal the breaches which have occurred. These last minute efforts will not help much as the damage has already been done and the ravages of the sea will require formidable defences to contain them and the infrastructure is just not there.

The SDB/MoPI were committed to implement scientific approaches to the planning and execution of interventions in the country’s sea and river defences with emphasis placed on sustaining functional and structurally adequate dykes to protect life and property particularly in critical coastal areas from the onslaught of the sea. Further, the Dutch had conducted a hydrographic study of Guyana’s coastland and concluded that erosion/accretion of its foreshore was occurring in a cyclic mode and moving westwards. Presently, erosion with breaches is taking place at several coastal locations including Fyrish and Mahaicony.

The SDB/MoPI have no planned programme to raise and strengthen the copings of existing seawalls and earthen embankments to counteract the hydraulic forces impacting on them. Therefore weak areas are being seriously eroded and breaches are causing flooding and extensive damage to properties.

Guyana has limited resources to spend on its infrastructure. Unfortunately, much of it is wasted on questionable projects such as elevators on road overpasses and the planting of mangroves on the foreshore to arrest erosion. Ms. Arjoon, one of the principal proponents of this idea should visit Mahaicony and get a firsthand look at what has happened to the mangroves there and its ineffectiveness in preventing the breach which has caused extensive flooding to large areas of valuable farmlands.

It is time that the government through its SDB/MoPI start constructing adequately designed sea and river defences in critical areas to protect the lives and property of the many poor people living along the coastland from rising sea levels which is generating larger destructive forces on the sea defences.

Yours faithfully,

Charles Sohan