SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth — Nearly five years after it began with a completion schedule set for months, a drainage canal in Treasure Beach, which is meant to prevent a repeat of catastrophic flooding experienced in 2005, is only half completed.

A recent visit to the south coast village — traditionally dependent on fishing but now increasingly renowned for off-beat, community-style tourism — revealed that much of the drainage canal has been taken over by bush and shrubbery.

Worse, large chunks of the canal’s banks are being eaten away by periodic rain and ‘heavy water’, threatening homes in a few cases.

Anecdotal evidence and published reports suggest that work on the canal — supervised by the National Works Agency (NWA) — last took place in 2009 when environmentalists contended that it was happening in clear breach of environmental rules.

But notwithstanding environmental and design concerns, the consensus in Treasure Beach, where residents are anxiously eyeing the approaching hurricane season, is that the canal must now be completed.

The problem for the Government — constrained by loan conditionalities set out by multilateral lender, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) — is money.

The NWA’s Stephen Shaw suggested that based on cement prices it will require over $200 million to complete the 1,000-metre drainage canal which begins in the vicinity of a complex of natural ponds, including the Great Pond, in Great Bay and empties into the sea beside the Mar Blue hotel at Calabash Bay.

Shaw said an effort will be made to get an allocation in the next budget year which begins in April.

It’s a prospect that gives even the normally articulate member of parliament for South West St Elizabeth (including Treasure Beach) and minister of agriculture, Chris Tufton, reason for pause.

“Like everyone else, I am anxiously awaiting some solution,” he told the Observer. “I can tell you that the minister (Mike Henry) is also well aware…”

The lack of money has caused embarrassment to the stage where some residents say they have still not been paid for land used to provide passage for the canal.

“I haven’t received one dime,” said Hursley Moxam, who claimed he was “forced” by the Government to sell a quarter-acre of prime real estate belonging to his overseas-based sister, for a third of its real value.

Tens of millions of dollars budgeted for the canal project since it first started in 2006 under the People’s National Party (PNP) government of the day went to the actual digging of the drain, the building of two box culverts as well as concrete reinforcement of the banks and floor of the canal at the exit to the sea beside Mar Blue.

Under the NWA’s plan, the rest of the canal must also be reinforced with concrete. Given the rapid erosion of its banks, those living closest to the canal can’t wait.

Nelson Taylor, whose home is said to be closest, told the Observer by telephone that when the canal was dug back in 2006, “the bank was 25 to 30 feet away from my fence”.

Now, he said, it is “three feet inside of my fence and 15 feet from my house”.

Treasure Beach hotelier, community activist and head of the St Elizabeth Parish Development Committee Jason Henzell said property values have been badly affected because of the incomplete drain and the rapid erosion of its banks.

“I have a house right now that is on the canal and people are not even interested in renting it because it is close to the canal, and the canal is breaking away,” said Henzell.

Notwithstanding all that, Taylor, Henzell, Moxam and others in Treasure Beach accept the necessity of the canal.

Indeed, they say that during the Nicole rains of late September last year, it was the canal — even in its incomplete, badly overgrown and eroded state — that saved the Great Bay area of Treasure Beach from being flooded as it was six years ago.

Residents say the drain did its job in taking excess water from the ponds to the sea at the height of the rain which flooded numerous communities across St Elizabeth and the wider Jamaica, causing several deaths, monumental damage and forced hundreds to flee their homes.

“I can tell you that if the canal wasn’t there, Great Bay woulda wash weh in Nicole,” said Taylor.

It’s a sentiment shared by Great Bay grocer and bartender Austin Rochester, who remembers vividly how in late 2005, the lignum vitae tree close to his business place became the ‘dock side’ for locals who were forced to use small boats to go about their business.

Back then, rains from Hurricane Wilma led to massive overflow of the Great Pond and its satellites. The ponds joined to form a huge lake which forced scores of people in Treasure Beach to vacate their homes and left Great Bay marooned for several weeks.

“We woulda definitely flood out again last year if it wasn’t for the canal,” said Rochester, “but they definitely need to finish it, it can’t stay like that or it gwine cause great disaster.”

Henzell and Rochester are among those arguing that the Government should consider using gabion baskets instead of concrete to reinforce the sides of the canal. “My understanding is that Tankweld (construction company) has made a proposal to do the sides out of gabion basket which is environmentally friendly and much cheaper… that’s something I think the Government should consider,” said Henzell.