FOR more than 50 years Papiout has called New Haven in St Andrew home, and for many of those years he has watched helplessly as flood waters from even the most minor weather system rushed through his yard and inundated the streets.

It was no different on Tuesday as Papiout (that’s the only name he gave) and his neighbours stood forlorn as they accepted their fate.

“We live in this condition for years, so now it not even come like nothing to we,” said Papiout.

He pointed out that a section of the Duhaney River, behind Alex Import on Spanish Town Road, is in need of urgent cleaning but argued that that alone would not stop the constant flooding.

According to Papiout, in a sentiment shared by several of his water boots-clad neighbours, efforts to stop the flooding over the years have failed because Government technocrats have not addressed the root cause of the problem.

“What happen is that the four culverts that take the water out of the community, dem blocked up with the debris from the gully, and you see the boulders that them put in the river, those should be at the mouth of the gully so that it would channel the gully water through two of the culverts and the river through the other two,” he said.

“What happens now is that the gully water block up the culverts, so the river water has nowhere to go but into we yards and onto the streets. If them did just listen to us and put the big boulders where we tell them, we wouldn’t have this flooding. Them have the degrees but we live here for years and we just need some people to listen to us,” added Papiout.

In July this year, New Haven escaped the worst of Hurricane Beryl, which side-swiped the island, but several roads in the community were flooded as residents then bemoaned what has become a painful regular ordeal.