FOUR years after Jusamco Pavers won a $280 million contract to complete Package 5A of the Point Fortin Highway extension, a 180-metre section of the roadway has collapsed, rendering half of the new highway impassable.
When the contract was awarded, Works and Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan expected 50 years of recurrent flooding to end with a new highway built on an embankment protected by a seawall.
In announcing the project as a "huge step" in 2019, he probably didn't imagine it would end up becoming, in just three years, a serious step backward.
The highway project, estimated to cost $4 billion in 2009, almost doubled in cost over the course of its halting, protest-prone construction, and eventually collapsed along with the principal contractor, the bankrupt Brazilian firm OAS Construtora.
The new roadway was opened to the public in November 2020, complete with two new bridges.
The project was declared "above water," but the nearby swamp and ocean had other plans.
A week ago, NIDCO acknowledged that "a slope instability had occurred on a section of the roadway at Mosquito creek."
Astonishingly, NIDCO further acknowledged that project engineers had warned that Mosquito Creek was at "highest risk of failure during construction due to the prevailing geotechnical conditions of the soil."
NIDCO's effort to soft-pedal the failure of a large section of the roadway facing the ocean and to obfuscate clearly visible water coursing under the asphalt isn't helping.
The government also isn't doing itself any favours by posting armed guards to block media access to the collapsed roadway.
What happened at Mosquito Creek is an experience any child who has built a sandcastle while the tide is coming in understands.
The ocean will have its way, particularly when the geography has already established conditions for the formation of a swamp fed by its rising waters.
The effort at dumping rocks as a seawall with no foundation simply failed. The sea simply went under them.
Why weren't drainage tunnels to link the two bodies of water part of the project scope?
Dr Wayne Kublalsingh who protested several sections of the routing of the highway project, but not package 5A, called on Government to do the work properly.
A proposed causeway, which would have lifted the road above the zone of environmental confluence was dropped, allegedly because of cost and potential challenges from activists.
What's needed now is more transparency in addressing this problem that looks set to wash away $280 million in taxpayers' money.
Repairs are likely to cost millions more, but before patchwork begins, an informed consultation led by independent experts, should report on the viability of the project and offer a lasting solution to this half-century old problem.
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