MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Claims that work on the May Pen to Williamsfield leg on the east-west corridor of Highway 2000 resulted in flooding in a number of Clarendon communities during the passage of Tropical Storm Ida a few weeks ago are being challenged by National Road Operating and Constructing Company (NROCC).

Residents of Tollgate, St Toolies, and Trinity have blamed the highway project for the flooding of homes and roads, and have received support from Opposition Member of Parliament (MP) for Clarendon South Western Lothan Cousin, Opposition spokesman on transport Mikael Phillips, and MP for Manchester Southern Robert Chin of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party.

“Construction on the highway has caused water and flooding that has never been seen before,” Chin told the Jamaica Observer last week. “Right now, there is still water settled in some areas, especially the Trinity area in the Porus division, and just driving along that alignment I can see where the water break away some of the roads. It has never been there before, so we know that it is because of the construction why this flooding has occurred along the alignment.”

However, George Nicholson, senior manager for technical services at NROCC, pointed out that the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) played a central role in how the current highway construction is being done.

“I think it [cause of flooding] requires a little more analysis. We would have done, as part of the permitting process from NEPA, an extensive drainage study looking from the foothills of Clarendon all the way down across the A2 (main) road through Tollgate coming down to the highway to look and see what the impact of storm water is going to be,” he said yesterday.

“The entire Clarendon plains are very flat, so you don’t get rapid movement of the water across the plain; so we had to look at the hydraulics of that to see where the flows are concentrated,” Nicholson explained.

“There are some areas that were flooded north of the highway, but it doesn’t appear that the flooding there was caused by the highway. Of course, because there is a construction project going on people are going to indicate that it is the construction that is causing it,” he added.

He said Decoy Road at Osbourne Store was flooded, although mere metres away there is a major drain at a section of the highway which had a low level of water.

“It suggests there are other drainage issues between the main roads themselves that may be causing problems, so the teams are looking at it to see exactly how these things can be ameliorated. Of course, we also have to look at the fact that we have a project that is under construction, so all of our drainage facilities are not yet in place,” he said.

“We have given instructions to our consultant and to the contractors to ensure that we get the maximum flow out of the drainage that is in place already… I was out here in the storm [and] it appears that our drainage facilities have been working as planned,” he added.