45,000 Cubic Metres Of Silt Removed From Nasivi River
Minister for Waterways, Environment and Agriculture, Dr Mahendra Reddy said 45,000 cubic metres of silt material from the Nasivi River waterway were cleared recently.
Works conducted in the area include six kilometres being cleared up right to the river mouth.
He confirmed this after commissioning the completion of the Nasivi River Desilting Works on Tuesday.
The desilting works were done within 35 days by the contracted company Ravindras Civil Works Pte Ltd earlier this year.
Dr Reddy said this was done to prevent flooding, support the business activity, protect villages, and to open up a mode of transportation from villages to the sea.
“We find entire business activity has changed, which is causing more runoff water to come down our waterways, and our waterways do not have the capacity to discharge them as they were discharging before for several reasons,” he said.
“The volume of water that we see in our waterways has gone up because of climate change and intensive rainfall.
“Secondly, we’ve got a lot of activities happening upstream in the catchments, logging, agriculture, so that is pushing a lot of runoff water into the waterways.”
He said there was a reduction in the discharge capacity due to siltation and debris coming from the catchment.
He said the ministry, in partnership with the contracted companies, would clear the waterways and increase the discharge capacity.
“We just can’t clear we have to also increase the discharge capacity and that’s exactly what we did at the Nasivi River,” he said.
“Lifestyle in villages and coastal communities are intertwined with the sea and coastal area.
“You can’t block them off from the coast or from reaching the sea and that’s what exactly happened with the mangrove, with the silt and the debris, they were not able to go right to the sea.”
Tavua District representative Ratu Ovini Bokini conveyed his thanks on behalf of the Tui Tavua.
He said the community was fortunate to be assisted by the Fijian Government.
116 waterways including rivers to be cleared
Meanwhile, a total of 116 waterways and rivers remained to be cleared in terms of desilting works.
This was after Dr Reddy commissioned the completion of Nasivi River desilting project on Tuesday.
“This needs a lot of financial resources and we are proud that we gave priority to this Nasivi River because of the impact it had had on this village, the neighbouring community and the town,” he said.
Dr Reddy said this was to address the issues caused by congested waterways such as the productivity of the villages, communities, farmers and the business sector.
“Progressively, we have done Rakiraki, we need to go back and clean that up. We are planning to clear the Nakauvadra River mouth that’s remaining. We need to clear that in the next financial year. We want to do Ba, we commissioned the Ba River dredging but there’s some issues,” he said.
“So, we will deal with them. We want to clear the Ba River where there is massive work we need to do. There was a dredging company that did some work. They stopped, but we’re going to meet with them.”
He said works were underway to clear the Nadi River, and other clearing works upstream of the Sigatoka River would be ongoing.
“We need to clear Navua River. We have done Rewa River, we’re very happy with that and we then have to move to other secondary rivers outside these major rivers that we will be advertising next week.”