Corinth residents complain about lingering sewer woes

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

The pun­gent smell of raw sewage flow­ing in­side and be­hind peo­ple’s homes and in­to wa­ter­cours­es was what Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der en­coun­tered when he vis­it­ed Corinth yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The grav­i­ty of the pub­lic health haz­ard prompt­ed Alexan­der to call for po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to con­tracts award­ed un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion for the con­struc­tion and main­te­nance of sew­er­age treat­ment plants in Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) com­mu­ni­ties.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Alexan­der said the Gov­ern­ment would move swift­ly to ad­dress the res­i­dents’ com­plaints about the prob­lem, de­scrib­ing the con­di­tions as un­bear­able and a se­ri­ous pub­lic health haz­ard for hun­dreds of res­i­dents from Corinth Hills, Rail­way Line, Vic­to­ria Vil­lage and River­side North, Corinth, who com­plained of over­flow­ing sew­er lines and sewage col­lect­ing close to their homes.

Alexan­der said the con­di­tions sug­gest­ed that in­fra­struc­ture works had been left un­fin­ished and main­te­nance con­tracts had not been prop­er­ly ex­e­cut­ed.

“We are on the ground sev­en days a week, some­times 24 hours a day,” Alexan­der said, ex­plain­ing that he had vis­it­ed the area af­ter re­ceiv­ing a call from San Fer­nan­do East shad­ow MP John Michael Al­i­bo­cas.

He said the sit­u­a­tion was worse than it had been de­scribed to him over the tele­phone.

“We are go­ing to have the rapid re­sponse team back down here as ear­ly as to­mor­row, hope­ful­ly, to give us an as­sess­ment of what needs to be done to bring these res­i­dents out of the hell they live in right now,” he said.

Alexan­der said raw sewage was over­flow­ing from the treat­ment plant serv­ing the up­per Corinth Hills de­vel­op­ments and en­ter­ing the sur­face-wa­ter drainage sys­tem, where it was col­lect­ing in a makeshift catch pit be­hind res­i­dents’ homes.

“To stand and smell, it’s over­pow­er­ing, and it’s feet, three feet, four feet from peo­ple’s hous­es, from their win­dows. Peo­ple can’t live un­der those cir­cum­stances,” he said.

He said the treat­ment plants in­stalled in HDC de­vel­op­ments were sup­posed to be sup­port­ed by main­te­nance con­tracts but sev­er­al were now non-func­tion­al.

Alexan­der said he want­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the con­tracts award­ed un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­clud­ing those for in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment.

“The per­son who was re­spon­si­ble for the in­fra­struc­ture in this de­vel­op­ment has ques­tions to an­swer as to why there would be open drains be­tween these two com­mu­ni­ties, why there would be an un­fin­ished drain,” he said.

Alexan­der said the im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty was to as­sess what could be done to re­duce the over­flow while de­ter­min­ing the work re­quired to re­store the sew­er­age treat­ment plant. He said cov­er­ing drains could pro­vide some tem­po­rary re­lief, but de­ci­sions about whether res­i­dents need­ed to be re­lo­cat­ed would de­pend on the as­sess­ment by the rapid re­sponse team and fur­ther dis­cus­sions with the Min­istry of Hous­ing and the HDC.

Mean­while, Al­i­bo­cas said HDC com­mu­ni­ties need­ed to be prop­er­ly vest­ed so that the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and the rel­e­vant re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions could main­tain sew­er­age in­fra­struc­ture and garbage dis­pos­al fa­cil­i­ties, help­ing to pre­vent sim­i­lar pub­lic health prob­lems. He said res­i­dents have been com­plain­ing for years.

Caris­sa Boodoo-Chu­ni­lal, who lives along Rail­way Line, said her daugh­ter had sores on her hands and feet, and they al­so suf­fer from breath­ing prob­lems.

She called on HDC to re­pair the pump, ad­dress the over­flow­ing drains and con­sid­er cov­er­ing them to re­duce ex­po­sure.

“We’d like to know if we could get the drain cov­ered at least, if they could fix the pump, or some­thing can be done be­cause we’ve been en­dur­ing this for years and noth­ing is be­ing done,” she said.

Ani­ka Williams said sewage had been af­fect­ing her prop­er­ty for about two weeks, while an­oth­er res­i­dent liv­ing near­by had been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing sewage flows in­side her home.

Williams said the smell had be­come so bad that she could no longer open her back win­dows.

Williams said the sit­u­a­tion was par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­tress­ing be­cause she had paid $650,000 for her home.

“It is hor­ri­ble to pay $650,000 and every morn­ing I get up is some­where flood­ed,” she said.

Corinth/ Cedar Hill coun­cil­lor Shawn Prem­chan said the over­flow­ing sew­er line had af­fect­ed res­i­dents across sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties for close to 10 years.

He es­ti­mat­ed that more than 1,000 peo­ple could be af­fect­ed across the sur­round­ing de­vel­op­ments.