[ad_1]
The beginning of the solution to reducing floods in our country lies with one minister. That minister is neither Sinanan, Al-Ravi nor Imbert. This is Minister Marvin Gonzalez.
And it only takes one move. If that move is not withdrawn, we can prepare for more and more frequent floods like the previous one.
But not only floods, we should also prepare for more droughts with water shortages and all the accompanying social and economic disturbances.
All Secretary Gonzalez has to do is separate the Water Resources Agency (VRA) from VASA. Don’t even associate his removal with the restructuring of VASA. Get the VRA out now and we’ll be sure to deal with flooding and all other climate change related water issues.
Let me explain. As it stands, there is a rather absurd situation that VRA, the agency for the independent management of our water resources, is a department within VASA, the largest user of water. VASA prioritizes VRA’s budget and is naturally partial to funding activities that favor its interest in obtaining drinking water.
Meanwhile, some of the agency’s key functions related to flood control, such as collecting and distributing rainfall and streamflow data, analyzing data to develop drainage design tools, and creating flood hazard maps, are all down. priority and as a result is not well funded.
Talk to any drainage engineer in our country and you will hear how frustrating it is to get information to build their projects. Ultimately, they have to do a lot of guesswork and rely on engineering judgment to size their drains and detention basins.
This could, of course, lead to more expensive infrastructure if they are too large, or worse, increased flood damage because they are too small. The information needed to develop dewatering standards, establish a national dewatering code, and create dewatering manuals really cannot go without such input.
It does not mean that our leaders do not know the importance of this move. As early as the 1980s, there were attempts to separate the agency from VASA. From time to time, staff would be told that a move was imminent. It’s 2022 and VRA is still under VASA.
The minister announced that part of the current plan to restructure VASA actually includes the removal of the VRA. If this were done, and the established institution was supplied with all the necessary resources, it would encourage the proper management of water resources in our country.
It will provide some hope that engineers will get the information they need to solve infrastructure problems such as required levee heights, drain sizes, how high pumps should be placed and how coastal roads are built.
Rightly so, there is now a huge public clamor for the government to fix our broken drainage infrastructure.
However, we should not limit our clamor just to get the infrastructure promised by the Minister of Works and Transport. This minister should be made aware that we do not want to face such floods often. For that to happen, he must support his engineers and be part of the call to fix the entire system.
The way I see it, the ball is in Minister Gonzalez’s court to start this.
The Faculty of Engineering is holding an international conference on the safety of water resources for SIDS from December 14-16. On Wednesday afternoon there is a special session on building flood resilience. More details can be found at the following link:
https://vvv.vatefnetvork.co.uk/programme.
[ad_2]
Source link
