Repairs to the slipped section of the Boerasirie Conservancy dam have started at an estimated cost of just over $11M and the authorities are contemplating making the dam off-limits.
The aim is to curtail, contain, and then to reinforce the slipped section, Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud said during a visit to the site yesterday. He said that the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) and the contractor Mohan Persaud have indicated a time frame of four days to get the works done. “The ultimate aim is to make here a no access zone,” he said.
A section of the dam, at Canal Number Two, slipped last Sunday after a major crack appeared in the days prior. Repairs, however, had been delayed.
Asked what could have caused the slippage, Persaud said a number of reasons but it will be examined further. “Some geo-technical surveys will have to be carried out to get the scientific reason but the assumption is because of the constant driving and… there is no vegetation holding the dam together and persons moving trucks, six, seven, ten tonnes trucks and heavy vehicles… could have undermined that, but that is what the assumption is,” he noted.
Persaud said that he ordered further geo-technical work to be done because they did not want a recurrence. That work is to start soon. Yesterday, a dragline and two excavators were on site doing work. The dragline was pounding the piles into the earth.
One of the excavators was on a pontoon, the first time this has been deployed on the Boerasirie Conservancy. Persaud said that the response indicated the ability of the relevant agencies to respond effectively in an emergency. “This is precarious and you don’t want this to be around for too long because it can be dangerous,” he explained.
He said that 24-hours monitoring has been instituted and responding to a question noting that residents had said that they had informed the ranger when the crack had appeared but he cursed them, Persaud said that he did not doubt the people. “I myself, we’re not too satisfied with the level of monitoring,” he said. He added that the Boerasirie Conservancy management has to be more aggressive and should employ more persons if it has to.
He also urged that residents “take it right up” because “this can be catastrophic if we don’t manage it.”
Monitoring across the country is always a problem, he noted. According to him, “The conservancies and the soil conditions that we have here are very, very vulnerable, very susceptible in terms of waves and its misuse.” He pointed out that residents have been using the dam as a roadway when it was not built for that purpose. He said that 220 structures on the dam had been moved and they are looking at making the dam a no access zone like the East Demerara Water Conservancy dam but this would have to be done over time. “We don’t want to take a bulldozer effect,” Persaud said. He added that in the long term, they will be looking at how the dam can be further boosted. Some work on raising the level of the embankment had been done previously.
As regards, the water level of the Conservancy, Persaud noted that for the current rainy season it has not reached the full supply level and “blowing” is constantly being done to ensure that it does not get up to that level.
