Dear Editor,
The secondary Town of Charity, with a population of eight thousand, located on the right bank of the Pomeroon River, can disappear in the next fifty years if preventative measures are not put in place to avert this impending tragedy.
Over the past two hundred years, the Pomeroon River has experienced landslides because of the immense depth of this River. The Pomeroon River has experienced six landslides in this time, the two major ones were at upper Siriki and at lower Kansan Ali Square Lower Pomeroon.
Charity, a main in-transit point is located on a pegasse subsoil, about seventy-five feet in depth and occupies a perimeter of one mile, bordered by dredge Creek New Road and Cozier canal.
This phenomenon took place about a million years ago when the Pomeroon River changed its course from a northeast direction to north-west direction and the ninety-degree turning point is at Charity, where the heaviest point of erosion is concentrated.
Up to 1948, the river banks of Charity was permeated with dozens of huge ‘Crueda trees’ which mitigate the impact of erosion. However, infrastructures, such as wharves, marketing centre, fish complex, fuel station on the river bank have all contributed to the shifting of the weak subsoil. In some areas the shifting of land to the River is noticeable.
Within the last thirty-six years, erosion has claimed about twelve meters of the foreshores, leaving a number of industrial complexes vulnerable. In 1996, the government was ill-advised to build a boat landing as well to reinforce the foreshores.
On that project the consultant and engineer did not take into account the experience and knowledge of the local people or did any scientific analysis of the subsoil; as such the project began to exhibit slipping of structures. When the subject Minister visited the site I was there and his remarks to me was, and I quote “why you didn’t tell me”- I was never a part of that arrangement.
However, the deal was to have the structures done with one hundred and fifty, metal sheet piling, forty feet in length, tonnes of green heart wood and hundreds of trucks load of earth and sand that broke the lower pegasse subsoil and Sheet Piling, now the remains lying sixty feet underwater. The contractor was made the ‘Scapegoat’. However that calamity restricted some among of erosion, for some time, but disaster has appeared again, three areas are affected by the main river dam to mitigate this process a bypass of the Pomeroon River current, have to be done, that is to dig a canal cutting the ‘U-TURN’, of the river which impact is on Charity Community. Such a diversion can be done from Jiediree square, lower Jacklow, one mile across to Adams Creek, below Charity. With much earth moving the device, this bypass can be done in two months’ time.
Regards
Isahak Basir CCH