(via GuyanaFriends.com)
Canadian M.P. Jim Karygiannis is warning that Guyana - still reeling from the flooding caused by five days of continuous, unremitting rain in mid-January - faces an even greater potential danger from massive flooding in the official rainy season of May and June.
“There is a very real possibility that flooding could take place on a truly monumental scale,” Karygiannis, just back from a fact-finding visit to Guyana , told Pride News Magazine. “The dams which control the East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC), could break and thousands could die and be made homeless in Georgetown .
“This is not mindless scare-mongering; this is a fact. Worse, I was reliably informed that if the [Northern] dam was to burst, the force of the water could well breach the seawall.”
Karygiannis, the Federal Member of Parliament for Scarborough-Agincourt, met with Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin just before leaving for Guyana , and had another meeting with him within hours of returning to Canada .
“The Prime Minister was anxious to learn of Guyana ’s needs in the wake of the January flooding” Karygiannis said. “He told me that I should see him soon after I came back to Canada . The news I had to give him was far more serious than we could possibly have known.”
Karygiannis met Guyana ’s President Bharrat Jagdeo in Georgetown , but it was Ravi Narine, Chief Executive Officer of the National Drainage and Irrigation Board, and Head of the Task Force on Infrastructure Recovery, who alerted him to the potential for disaster posed by the condition of the EDWC’s northern dam.
He says that Narine told him: “If it breaks, we will lose the coast. Most of the populated area of Guyana would be flooded and the seawall could collapse. This would cause the coastline of Guyana to recede up to 20 miles inland, requiring the immediate evacuation of up to 40 per cent of the population.”
Georgetown and the coastal strip are below sea level, and protected by the seawall and a complex network of pumps and dykes. The EDWC area lies to the south-east of the capital city.
Karygiannis flew over the site, which was built 150 years ago by Dutch engineers, and is designed to handle one inch of rain per day. The old kokers - dam gates - used to control the volume of water are in a dilapidated state.
“Time and the recent severe flooding have left the walls of the Conservancy dams in a weakened state, and vulnerable to the ravages of the upcoming rainy season ,” Karygiannis said. “If they break, there is a very real possibility that thousands would perish.” Karygiannis has told Prime Minister Martin that a “major” effort must be made to strengthen the weakened dam gates at the EDWC, a job which is expected to call for the immediate expenditure of US$3.5 million, for what is, in fact, a short-term solution. He says that Britain is giving 500,000 Pounds Sterling - the equivalent of US$900,000.
The United States has committed US$1.2 million, and Karygiannis believes that Canada should immediately provide US$1.4 million towards the repairs.
Pride has obtained a copy of a confidential report prepared for the Government of Guyana by Dutch engineers Olaf van Duin and Nisa Nurmahomed, who were sent in from neighbouring Suriname .
They refer to the EDWC area as “a fragile construction,” and note: “At the eastern section of the northern dam, about 30 per cent of the dam is in critical condition. For the rest of the northern dam and the western dam, about 10 per cent is in a poor state.”
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