Dear Editor,

Your article with accompanying photo of excavation work in progress on the Hope Canal which appeared in SN of Jan 19 has revealed some serious impending problems facing this project. Firstly, there are a number of slips on the newly constructed canal slopes which indicate that they are too steep for stability of the poor soil formation through which they pass. Hence the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) needs its design engineers to urgently determine the cause for these slips and advise on the remedial actions which should be taken to tackle the problem before it becomes too costly to rectify, since these slips can have a ‘domino effect’ on the stability of the embankments causing breaches and disastrously flooding adjoining lands. Suggestions have been made to grass the canal slopes to stabilize them, and while this method has been found to be effective to arrest soil erosion on slopes it is impractical in this case for several reasons. During periods of heavy rainfall maximum discharge through the canal will be required, and grass on its slopes could seriously retard flows. Also, grass growing on the canal slopes will create a major and expensive maintenance problem.

The canal is and will be adversely affecting many farmers in the Hope/Dochfour area as their lands have been and are being ‘chopped-up’ causing access problems to their cultivated lands. It is evident that the MoA when it planned to undertake the excavation work for the canal under force account did not take into consideration that it had to make provision to facilitate the farmers (to cross the canal and the mounds of earth) to get to their divided lands during construction. Now that the problem has surfaced as farmers desperately try to get to their farms to reap their crops, the MoA is at loss to decide what action should be taken, if any, to relieve the farmers in terms of their losses and suffering, as it pushes ahead with a project which is behind schedule and unlikely to fulfil its design criteria with respect to flood discharges from the conservancy in a given time.

Yours faithfully,
Charles Sohan