Tired after 16 days of being surrounded by smelly floodwaters and waiting for relief, Dochfour, East Coast Deme-rara residents have begun putting their best efforts into helping themselves.
The residents have devised a plan to build a dam around the small community after which they will pump the water into the canals outside the dam. They have received help in executing the plan in the form of an excavator which was up to midday yesterday digging the Dochfour sideline and heaping the mud to form a barrier of sorts. When the dam is finished the water will then be pumped out.
Damming Dochfour: An excavator at work yesterday building up a dam at Dochfour, East Coast Demerara, over which residents hope to pump the foetid floodwater that has been lingering in the village for some 16 days. (Photo by Jules Gibson)
Roy Doodnauth, a farmer in the community who has lost all his crops told Stabroek News yesterday that something has to be done. “Deh trying with the koker, but how long we go deh in this mess?” the man asked rhetorically. He explained that there was no telling if the rains would come again and the water currently on the land was going nowhere. “What gon happen if the rains fall again?”
When Stabroek News visited the Hope koker yesterday an excavator was digging in the canal leading to it, but the water still remained at a high level.
Meanwhile, across at Ann’s Grove water has resided a bit, and residents are left counting their losses. James Gooding, a poultry farmer of Middle Walk Dam, Ann’s Grove complained bitterly. A dead duck lay on top of a pen, the latest in a long line of poultry that had nowhere to go and died in the stagnant floodwater. “This water destroy me,” the elderly farmer sighed, “I just throw way three piglets.” The farmer also lost several meat birds.
His daughter-in-law Marva Gooding, who lives at the back of the same yard, also lost a large number of poultry and 14 piglets. The water is discoloured and fetid, with animal remains in it. And the remaining ducks are “swizzling” about in the water making it even worse. Residents have nowhere to go and must carry out all chores in the water. Gooding lamented that no one had visited them down at the back. “They hear backdam and they think people ain’t live here,” she said.
She said that a woman in the village took down names of persons who lost livestock in the flood but as of yesterday there was no help forthcoming.
Melinda Herod talked of the mosquitoes that are invading in droves. “If you see the children skin,” Herod said. “Is all thing in this water…latrine worms…everything.”
Junior Gilbert who lamented the lack of preparedness for the rains, pointed to the shrub-filled trenches.
Survival is the uppermost thought in residents’ minds, both in Dochfour and Ann’s Grove. The predominantly farming communities are left with no produce to sell and have expressed their worry at how they will pay bills that will come in January.
Even more worrying is the fact that cupboards will run empty and there is no money to refill them.
“We need help here,” Doodnauth said. The farmer related that “they promise we something but deh only booking names steady.”
Sandra Samad was mopping out her bottom-flat at Dochfour, as the water had subsided a bit. The woman said that in her estimation there should be a better medical outreach programme. She said that a medex and a team were in the area. However, the residents had to go through the water to the vehicles on the road and show them that they had skin rashes before they were given medicine for it. She related that a neighbour with several children had to trek through the mud and water with all of them to the vehicle before she could have received any medication. “What about if you tek in nighttime now, what you gon use?” she asked, referring to medication for diarrhoea.
Samad also talked of the visit by President Bharrat Jagdeo on Christmas day. She said residents were a bit disappointed that he went to the dam separating Two Friends from Dochfour but did not go into their community to see first hand what they were faced with.
Sewraj Balmik also expressed the same sentiments. He said that people who do not live in the area were reporting to Jagdeo about the conditions there. “How they gon know?” he questioned yesterday. Balmik said the main problem in the community was the koker and as long as that is not fixed the community will remain in its distress, hence the move to build a dam.
Meanwhile a Government Information Agency (GINA) press release issued on Friday said that the continuous rainfall over Christmas Day and Boxing Day has put more stress on the drainage but “all activities are geared to get rid of the water quickly.”
The release said Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud had indicated that emergency work has to be carried out in Region Ten on the Himara Creek because of problems that have developed.
In the meantime, in other East Coast Demerara villages such as Enterprise, Victoria and Buxton water levels have subsided a bit, but still remain in some yards and in extreme cases in bottom flats. Evident along the coast is the muddy mess the water leaves behind, the damage to carpets, rugs and floorings and the huge cleanup to be done.
Residents are sceptical about starting cleaning now, as the rain may very well come again, causing a concomitant rise in the floodwater. (Melissa Charles)
Reporter Charles please go to PRADOVILLE and report on the flood there if any ….. BIG families live there just in case you don’t know.
Well the damage has already been done. So what can done to relieve the situation?
The government has got to get the Guyana gold mining workers involved.
Those boys can set up a 10 inch gravel pump dredge called a missile on a drum pontoon. The gravel pump can extract 30 to fifty tons of silt in a single 8 hour shift.
They need to make wooden frame boxes like a fence and fill up the space with coconut brooms, then line the bank of the canal for about 100 feet. The dredge will throw the silt behind this temporary wall, the brooms will trap the silt from running back into the canal with the water. When that portion of canal is done, move the wall to the next 100 feet and so on.
Encourage the farmers to plant lemon grass on the embankments of all their farming drains and canals. It is not the perfect solution, but it will work to hold the top soil from further erosion and runoff, until it can be replaced with the Ventiver grass.
Mosquitoes do not like the smell of lemon grass. Citronela oil, is a lemon grass oil extract, so you can solve two major problems with the lemon grass solution.
It will take some time and effort but this problem can be solved permanently. They have got to stop listening to the advice of these foreign consultants.
These high paid folks have been trained to solve such problems with heavy machinery,concrete, stone and steel, which erodes after awhile and is very costly to maintain.
It will cost approx 7 Million US dollars per mile for work and materials and maintenance if done the western way. The entire purpose of any of their development plans, is not progress. It is driven by profit, they do not care if the plan works or not, If you have enough money they will stick around, when the money runs out they are gone. The government is left with the loan repayment.
Joe.
joe i’m telling you send your advice as a letter to the press. only people with internet access can read these comments. let people in the street read your advice in the newspaper hard copies. come on man joe. you disappointing me.
M. Xiu Quan-Balgobind-Hackett,
If the advice is good, should’t SN reprint it in their news paper column? I hear what you are saying, but I am just too lazy.
Why dont you copy it and send it out. I give you my permission. You have just been hired as my assistant.
You know, I truly believe that Guyana can emerge as a model of engineering solutions based upon simple readily available resources that we already have. The entire world are anxiously seeking simpler solutions to many of their problems.
Guyana is perfect for setting up an environmental showcase where everyone is living in harmony with nature, where we have an overbundance of fish, fowl fruit and vegetables for everyone, and that in itself becomes the tourist attraction, where environmentally interested persons come to see how an entire nation is living by taking only the things we need from mother nature and nothing more, and also giving back by nurturing the environment.
What is happening, is that the constant erosion, filth, and silt buildup is disrupting local fish and shrimp breeding grounds. Once we can contain the soil runoff and clean up the silt, the fish and shrimp will return.
Those Himacs are slow lumbering machines that can carry out routine maintainance from time to time, but they are not the right tool for the present magnitude of the work at hand.
On the other hand, they do not have enough silt in those canals for a 12 inch gravel pump. a gravel pump will suck the silt out of those canals so fast,they would not what to do with the silt.
The same method could be used for the canals in the city, Just use a 6 inch pump, it does not even need a pontoon, it can sit on a flat bed truck. All they need to do it erect the broom barrier I mentioned, along the bank of the canal, to contain the silt and drain the water back. How hard is that ?
Moderator’s note: A composite of Mr Coxall’s comments on flooding will be carried as a letter in the December 29 edition.
JOE, I don’t know you but what you are explaining to us makes a lot of sense, and I believe it will work….you need to somehow get in the right authorities ear about this, find the right channels and get your ideas and solutions into the discussions on this situation.
Joe are you crazy. They (government) should have listen to the advice of the Dutch engineers that were there a few years age. The aggrogance of this govenment is the cost of the problem. They know everything but the reality is that they don’t know anything.
Joe and others here I suggest take a look back at the India initiative in the 60’s when they embarked on an agricultural drive that was unheard of. First of all there was a 5 year D&I plan that blows the mind. They used all local stuff, they did not hire the west. Joe’s plan is quite similar to theirs. They succeeded big time! At this stage I personally think that a plan that is not tied to billions of US loans will NEVER be approved by this regime!!! Come to your own conclusions on this thought… India has continued to outperform the rest of the world with LOCAL inventions.
See below how SN recognize your worth, with lil nudgin’ from me? But I hope they don’t publish M. Tannassee’s outrageous claim about water flowing UPHILL!
Hi there “Uncle” Joe! That there is nothing “new” under the sun… then, “A Socialist Economy Through Agricultural, Industrial And Technical Development” being the presentation to the Third Biennial Congress of the PNC by the late Desmond Hoyte should be good reading for some to develop strategies to process the excess agricultural and poultry produce from these communities.
Wonder what happened to the quarries? What about wire baskets with stones shipped down on pontoons? You kidding Joe? 100feet of coconut brooms? How many tons of silt are we talking about here? Wooden boxes to hold this silt back?
I AGREE. JOE YOUR ADVICE IS GREAT.LET THOSE FAT CATS SEE IT SO THEY CAN HELP THESE POOR PEOPLE.
Joe…These things are easily said than done the amount of stray animals on the dams and parpets in Guyana alone will destroy anything..Almost all the flooded areas are caused by bad garbage disposal…the Pomeroon River mouth is clogged up with the Coconut husks and branches that the farmers disposed of in the river, this is responsible for the flooding there.Most parts of the east coast is food boxes and plastic bottles, G/Town is food boxes and plastic bottles, the garbage damage the impellers of the brand new pumps put into operation.So people must take pride in what they are doing and most of these problems will evade them and it will cost the govt less.
Joe,what you are saying is “common Sense”
hey godfrey are you related to the webster’s in hopetown.
I wanted to know that too, if he is related to big nose Boogie Webster.
It’s good to see the residents are taking things in their own hands, instead of waitng on the govt, this is called self help, this is a short term solution, but in the long term the residents have to learn how to not throw garbage in the drains, and have a proper way to dispose garbage, this will help to alleviate the floodings.
It would be interesting to know it what ways there can be any levels of business collaboration between the residents of these flood prone areas and well meaning supporters in places like North America, Europe…. except activities like having “cocaine” and other “illegal drugs” shipped along with fish, pepper sauce, furniture…. they can send all the “gold” and “diamonds” though!
Are you kidding me?? Just imagine, the residents devise plan to dam Dochfour, in other words, doing their own Public Service. Therefore, who needs a National or Local Gov’t. The taxpayers in Dochfour should organize, collect and use their own tax money to finance this dam along with other community projects.
We have an incompetent Gov’t collecting tax payer money and not rendering even the most basic of Public Services to the electorate, and I’m supposed to believe that this administration can’t lose another general election so something called Shared Governance is the only hope. Rafiki (friend) give me a break, because villages like Dochfour and beyond are golden opportunities to dethrone an insensitive elected dictatorship. Effective and targeted Public Service will trump the Apan Jat vote syndrome every time and everywhere. Where are the opposition political strategists in the house??
If the opposition parties in Guyana are paying attention, please be reminded that general election votes are farmed and then earned through Public Service and not by playing politics. The Dochfour villagers are showing the way to achieve electoral success and it’s as simple as doing some outreach Public Service, need I say more watu??…
It would be really nice if Stabroek News (SN) could use this site as a development platform to spread ideas such as this one by the “Residents of Dochfour who have devised this “plan to dam” their community. And, it cannot be an overstatement that “electro-mechanical pumps” (which can all be produced locally at the Guyana National Engineering Corporation – GNEC) is part of the solution for ridding these inundated communities in Guyana when ever there is excessive rain fall.
Keep up the good work of spreading the word Stabroek News (SN); after all, you are on the ground; and, demonstrating to the world what people who are willing to help themselves can do. BTW, where are the Peopls’s Army – Corps of Engineers??? Are they still bulldozing the farmlands in the Buxton backlands hunting for Finemen!!!
…. this is for the thing that knows not from whence it originated or to which specie it belongs ,, this is made pelucid by the genetic makeup ,, of it’s salutaion to which it is hinged on for the purpose of recognition !….
meh ah trow meh carn ,, cluck cluck cluck ! meh nah call no fowle !
“the essence of knowledge is,, having it !,, and to apply it ,,,,,not
having it to confess ur “ignorance” (coupled with stupidity)!
Confucius….