THE island’s real estate developers will, as of July 1, be required to adhere to new drainage system guidelines in order to get their development projects approved.

The new Guidelines for Preparing Hydrologic and Hydraulic Design Reports for Drainage Systems of Proposed Development Applications document — launched on Tuesday by Minister of Transport, Works and Housing Dr Omar Davies at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston — is aimed at mitigating the country’s high incidence of flooding.

Davies said that, with urbanisation and climate change impacting the performance of drainage systems, Government has seen the need to formulate a standard for the design of drainage systems by which all developers and environment stakeholders would be guided.

“Ultimately, this will reduce future impacts and economic losses from disasters,” he said. “The guidelines should further influence our approach to disaster risk management and bring about a necessary cultural change in our built environment and society on a whole.”

Additionally, Davies said that the document will not only be a guide for developers or engineers who prepare hydrologic and hydraulic reports, but will also help government entities that are involved in the building approval process.

He explained that the ministry, through the National Works Agency, receives on average just under 1,400 subdivision applications per year and of which 465 would require information relating to storm-water surface drainage plans and engineering reports. However, he said the NWA returns 144 application due to a lack of required information.

“About 33 per cent of the returned subdivision applications are immediate refusals, having been found to be woefully lacking in the type of information that the application reports should contain,” he added.

For building applications, he said, the NWA receives approximately 350 per annum and of that number approximately 150 are returned due to a lack of storm-water drainage information, while about 50 per cent of the applications are flatly refused each year for the same reason.

“A critical violation occurs when a developer’s proposal contains arrows showing the direction of the water flow instead of a detailed drainage infrastructure. This is unacceptable,” Davies stressed, noting that the new guidelines will decrease the number of applications that are refused or returned for further information and ensure that designs are optimal.

Meanwhile, Richard Thompson, deputy director general of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, said that the guidelines were of extreme importance in ensuring safe and effective developments.

“The occurrence of disasters in small and emerging economies like Jamaica is of major concern as a single event [and] has the potential to interrupt the development process and retard economic growth by destroying the physical infrastructure and the natural environment,” he pointed out.

The guidelines are a collaborative effort of the Ministry of Transport, Works and Housing, the NWA, ODPEM, the Water Resources Authority, and the Jamaica Institution of Engineers, Mines and Geology Department with input of a senior volunteer from the Japan International Co-operation Agency.

It outlines the minimum information to be included in the preparation of the drainage report; allow for more accurate design and the ease of application, evaluation and approval; and advance the mainstreaming of disaster risk reduction considerations into the project planning phase to reduce future impact and economic losses from disasters.