Mayor Bradley attributes flooding to bad drainage caused by older streets

A tropical wave that passed through the country over the past weekend dumped tremendous amounts of rainfall in Belize City as well as in some other districts. This caused varying flooding incidents in the Orange Walk, Cayo, Toledo and Belize districts.

According to Belize City Mayor, Darrell Bradley, the streets that have been newly constructed by the council have held up pretty well and remained damage-free, even after the downpour over the weekend. He pointed out that the flooding problem the council is facing is derived from bad drainage caused by older streets.

On Monday, he told reporters that personnel from the City Council were deployed after the rains occurred over the weekend. Although he was out of the city for most of the weekend, the mayor said that he also did a personal tour of the city upon his return and after consultation with his technical staff, he maintained that the streets that have been built by the City Council so far have held up and none have been damaged.

Mayor Bradley said, “The problem that we have had with the damage to streets as a result of drainage is as a result of the older streets that we have had. One of the things that we recognize with the municipal bond and with our investments in street works is that we have not been able to invest sufficiently enough in drainage; and this is a problem that we recognize.”

After this acknowledgment that they have not been able to invest enough money into drainage projects, the mayor went on to state that the City Council does have plans to address the poor drainage in the city.

“What we’re doing is that when we finish the works that we are at, when we finish the 100 streets, we are going to go back to ensure that all the culverts are flushed out. They put in culverts but they are not properly cleaned out; we’re going to put in place a maintenance system in terms of ensuring that those drains are clean,” Mayor Bradley said.

He also mentioned other techniques that have been utilized by the council to address the drainage issue. “One of the things that we’re doing because of budget, is that we’re using the street itself as a drain like when we did several of the streets — they are built on elevation and they have the stone drains like what we have on Handyside street, which are much cheaper, and which allows for a smooth flow. Stone drains only work when there is a system of drainage and that’s really the problem that we have. We have very good streets, and you have the water draining off, but those waters that are draining off collect in areas that are disposed, and they don’t run into canals or into systems,” the mayor explained.

“We recognize that that is a problem, we recognize that that is a weakness because of the financial amount of money that we’ve been able to invest, we have not been able to invest nearly as much as we wanted to in drainage but that is something that we’re looking into and we’re coming back in terms that we can deal with that,” he said.

The Belize City Council has constructed 86 streets so far out of the one hundred that they promised to build. After this phase of the project is completed, Bradley says they will be investing in proper drainage systems.

There are also reports of cases of localized flooding in various areas of the country. The National Emergency Management Organization issued an advisory regarding the flooding situation and said that the organization is monitoring and responding to affected areas. In the Orange Walk District, San Lazaro, Guinea Grass, San Lorenzo, Trial Farm, San Antonio, Carmelita and New Housing Area were experiencing flooding. The San Antonio/Yo Creek Road was virtually closed to vehicular traffic.

In the Toledo District, waters along the Blue Creek/Jordan Road were also rising while surrounding villages were being advised that river levels were rising across the district. River levels were also rising in the Cayo and Belize districts. Areas in the capital city of Belmopan also experienced some flooding.

Meanwhile, NEMO says it is on full alert and advises concerned or affected residents to call NEMO offices for information or in the case of an emergency, to call the NEMO hotline at 936.