WITH only a few days remaining before the start of the 2007/08 hurricane season, work is yet to begin on the Palisadoes peninsula in Kingston, which is highly flood-prone.

This, after Housing, Transport, Water and Works Minister Robert Pickersgill promised at a press conference in March that the government would be moving with dispatch to repair the roadway.

The strip, which is the sole access road to Kingston’s Norman Manley International Airport and the historic Port Royal, has been a source of concern as the roadway has been rendered impassable at times due to high waves from the sea. The strip was severely eroded by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

Speaking at the time, Pickersgill said the government would be spending some $40 million to deal with the peninsula. The minister also said preliminary meetings had been held with the Caribbean Development Bank to discuss financing arrangements for road repairs and rehabilitation.

Pickersgill said that in preparation for the Hurricane season, the government would be dealing with sections of the roadway which had been more severely affected during the last hurricane season as expectations were that “the Caribbean region could have more hurricanes”, with weather patterns being influenced by La Niña.

But subsequent attempts by the Sunday Observer to obtain an update from Pickersgill concerning the roadway were not accommodated by the minister, who expressed an unwillingness to entertain any telephone interviews.

Pickersgill, who requested that the questions be sent to him electronically has to date remained unresponsive, even though his office confirmed that the questions had been received.

Communications and Customer Service Manager at the NWA Stephen Shaw, however, told the Sunday Observer that “work has not yet started” on the roadway, but was unable to give further details.

Meanwhile, Minister of Local Government and Environment Dean Peart told the Sunday Observer that while the coastal protection study conducted by a Cuban firm on the peninsula and an engineering design had been completed, a contract for the construction had not yet been given out.

“Everything else has been done. The study, the design, that has been done; but we haven’t gone to contract yet. We are trying to finalise [it] before we can quantify everything to go to tender for construction,” Peart said.

The Local Government and Environment Minister said the plan was to dredge a section of the area and create an island to widen the strip.

“We are going to dredge the thing, create an island out there and widen the road on the peninsula. The problem is the waves coming in, so, we want to break the waves from out there. The island would break the waves so we wouldn’t have that type of damage and that’s the idea,” Peart explained.

Plans are also afoot to establish protective sand dunes along the stretch to minimise flooding and erosion. However, indications are that the work will not be carried out before the hurricane season begins.

Colorado State University’s Storm Prognosticator William Gray and Research Assistant Phil Klotzbach have forecast 14 named storms, including seven hurricanes for 2007 which would represent a slightly busier than normal season, which typically sees 11 named storms and six hurricanes.

However, Gray’s forecast was drafted in December before the La Niña conditions were detected.

After the passage of Hurricane Ivan in 2004, the strip was impassable due to immense quantities of sand and debris. The sand had also formed – what would later be called the “Palisadoes New Beach” – new strips of land on the Kingston Harbour side up to 50 metres wide.

According to an article submitted to the Observer by Professor Edward Robinson from the University of the West Indies’ Marine Geology Unit in the Department of Geography and Geology, the spit is in a precarious state as since the storm, the dunes’ average height above sea level is probably less than one metre whereas before the storm, it was partly protected by sand dunes about two metres high.

The article said although beach systems gradually recover naturally from such storm events, this part of the Palisadoes is in a precarious state, having lost much of the sand and rocks that protected it from the sea.