Dear Editor,

This is an open letter to Mr Patrick Wong, CEO of the National Works Agency.

As an engineer, I am extremely annoyed to see my tax dollars wasted.

Say we start with the laying of a new sewer line. The trench should be dug as fast as possible. The bedding sand (or whatever) should be put in and compacted to the slope and density required. The pipes should be assembled with gaskets and lubricant, and inserted sufficiently. The backfill should be put in and compacted in layers until the sewer line is surrounded completely by solidly compacted material. The earth should be put back over the backfill and compacted in layers. The pavement should be reinstated as fast as possible, so it doesn’t all get washed away in case of rain.

What I have been observing for years, is as follows.

After the job appears to be done, and sewage begins to flow in the newly laid line, within days of customers being connected to it, the road above develops a depression which may stay like that for weeks thereafter. Peculiarly, however, if it rains heavily, a sudden collapse most often occurs (almost as if a huge amount of stormwater was going into the sewer line). The “nicest” road collapse I’ve seen was on Trafalgar Road some years ago. You could practically toss a car into it.

More often, what happens next baffles me. Somebody gets the job to supply and put a few truckloads of marl or river shingle or dirt into the hole then to pave over it. Then it sinks or collapses again when it rains again – same place. And my tax dollars are wasted, again.

Has it not dawned on anybody yet, to rub two bits of grey matter (brains?) together and conclude that it is a total and absolute waste of tax dollars to keep doing this?

(1) Who are the contractors doing this shoddy work? Are they paid by the day rather than by the work performed? Often, days and even weeks go by when nothing is done. Then the rain comes, of course, and washes out the marl and dirt in the trench and wrecks the road.

(2) Apparently nobody has figured out that the formation of a depression in the road over a recently laid sewer line is a sign that sewage or whatever is flowing in the pipe, is escaping (assuming that the backfill was properly compacted), washing out some of the backfill, causing a void around the pipe joint where the leak is, making the roadway above sink, forming a depression when traffic runs over it, then more washes out. The pipe itself sinks into the hidden hole under the road, opening the leaking joint even more, permitting even more of the backfill and surrounding dirt to be washed into the sewer line (and messing up the sewage plant it goes to), and results eventually in a big collapse of the road, which our tax dollars fix.

(3) If the probable sequence of events described in #2 is understood, why on earth do people, upon finding a depression in the roadway over a recently laid sewer line throw marl or rocks or river shingle into it and pave over it? More so if there is the stench of sewage in the air.

Shouldn’t the contractor be instructed to dig up the sewer line immediately and stop the leak, or if there’s a whole series of collapses in a line, he be required to dig up the entire lot at his expense, and do it properly?

(4) If this happens all over the place, why is nobody finding out (a) if it is one contractor doing all of these sewer lines that are collapsing and fire him, or,

(b) if it is a number of contractors, what is it that all of these contractors are using or doing wrong to cause this consistent type of failure? Some smart engineers should advise these contractors who don’t seem to have a clue, and the contractors should have inspectors breathing down their necks while the work is being done. Otherwise our money will keep going down the drain year after year after year.

Howard Chin

hmc14@cwjamaica.com