Pump failures, littering blamed for NA flooding after heavy downpour

Heavy rainfall on Wednesday left sections of New Amsterdam inundated. The town’s Mayor Wainwright McIntosh said that the pumps were not working, resulting in the flooding of sections of the municipality.
The downpour started before daylight on Wednesday. In residential communities, citizens woke up to flooded yards. The entrances to several government agencies were also flooded.
Almost the entire Vryman’s Ervin was under several inches of water. Sections of Main Street and Strand, New Amsterdam were also flooded. However, none compared to the amount of water in Pitt Street, which is considered the commercial center of the town.
Many businesses there remained closed as flood waters flowed into their business places.
The town’s Mayor Wainwright McIntosh and a team from the municipality visited the affected areas to get a feel of what was happening. The mayor told this publication that heavy littering was one of the main factors that contributed to the flooding and as such, he called for a multi-sectoral approach to address the issue.
The municipality said it has a mandate to take care of the primary drainage system, while central government has responsibility for the secondary drainage network, which includes the canals and outfall channels.
“While the municipality and the central government will honour the obligations, citizens must honour their duty and responsibility to take care of their front drains and most importantly to desist from the practice of littering. Once we address this issue from a multisectoral approach we will have the necessary relief that we are looking for in terms of drainage because drainage plays a very important role within the township of New Amsterdam,” Mayor McIntosh told this publication.
He pointed out that over the past two decades, the landscape of New Amsterdam would have changed significantly, noting that the encumbrance is being caused to the drainage structure within the Township has been compromised.
“In the bylaws, there are specific measurements for the width and the depth of the drainage network. If we should pull our measuring tapes, we will see that consciously developers would have encumbered the drainage network. The drainage serves as the holding point for the water until the sluices are open. This morning, unfortunately when we had that heavy downpour of rain, we had a high tide. Hence, the doors were closed, and because this the drainage system did not have the capacity to hold the water coming from the downpour of rain. Hence, the flooding.”

Sluice attendant
However, the mayor is of the view that had the sluice attendant acted more responsibly, the water levels would have been much lower.
“The two pumps situated in the town, one at lot 31 Stanleytown and the other in Tucburg, those pumps were not on; are those pumps being put into operation during that. We would have had a million minimum minimal water inland because the pumps are designed to take the water from inland and pour it into the outfalls when the sluice doors are closed and the tides are high,” he said.
Meanwhile, Deputy Mayor Kirk Fraser, who heads the Municipal Works Committee, said it was unfortunate that the rainfall had resulted in flooding in sections of the town. He said the entire drainage system was compromised; whereby solid waste was being disposed of in the drainage network.
More worrying, he pointed out, is that in some cases, persons who were doing construction would have placed construction material into the drainage system.
‘That is why we are having this unfortunate situation, whereby we noticed that our drains are not flowing properly. This is as a result of people dumping indiscriminately – eating, throwing their food boxes, and the bottles into the drainage network. All those are things that are floating in the water now hence, we are having this problem. Our workers have to work under undue stress because the citizens themselves have been failing to do what they are supposed to do. In the light of climate change we need to be more responsible as citizens and ensure that the whatever we do does not impact the environment negatively.” The Deputy Mayor explained.
He added that what happened in New Amsterdam on Wednesday was a self-inflicted wound whereby citizens would have been indiscriminately disposing of solid waste in the drainage network. (G4)