Gareth Manning, Sunday Gleaner Reporter
A section of the Yallahs Ford which broke away during heavy rains associated with Hurricane Dennis on July 7, 2005. - Ian Allen Staff/Photographer
The Yallahs ford has been posing a problem to engineers and residents of St. Thomas for years. Though often rocky and dusty, it has been the preferred route for motorists travelling from the parish to Kingston.
Whenever there are heavy rains, the ford becomes impassible.
A Bailey bridge was built there in 2002 by the then PJ Patterson-led Government at a cost of several million dollars. But no sooner had the bridge been installed, than heavy rains destabilised the structure, which was washed away to sea.
Now, there is another bridge under construction, at a cost of $402 million, and residents as well as professionals are raising questions about whether the Government should waste more resources building another bridge that could suffer the same fate.
Two elderly men, one who identifies himself only as 'Red Cap', and the other, Vincent Gardener, both of Poor Man's Corner in Yallahs, have worked for years in the construction sector. They say the biggest problems facing the ford stem from two things: mining and deforestation.
"When dem carry out the stone, dem don't mine from the centre, dem mine from di side, and cause a dat, now when the river come down, it let loose, so it just bring sand and everything," says Red Cap. He has been living in the community only, since 1980.
Gardener, however, has been living in Poor Man's Corner since 1960. He was among a group that helped to put in a set of culverts to channel the water coming under the road out to sea in 1965, but then that collapsed, and then came the Bailey bridge.
"But the Bailey bridge didn't stand up that long, it also fell. And from that time, nothing has been done (to replace the bridge). So dem come with the mining ting and dem mine it, take out the big stones and take dem elsewhere. And then di place get loose. So, then the river come in and cut it down. So that that is what (cause it to be) like this," relates Gardener.
There has also been deforestation near the head of the river that contributes to its ferocity as it channels down the ford and out to sea.
"When those men cut those trees up there, sometime they lay near that gully in Llandewy north of parish, so when the gully comes down, it brings down the trees," Gardner explains. He adds that these trees sometimes get stuck in the bank and when the river comes down, it rips the bank away and widens the river's path.
He is not against plans to build the current bridge, but believes those responsible must first institute some river training. He states: "The engineering style looks like it will stand up, but they have to do some river-training work."
Badly needed maintenance
What Gardener is proposing is something that has been expressed by some professionals.
Speaking with The Sunday Gleaner, director of the Institute for Sustainable Development on the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies, Franklin McDonald, said a bridge across the ford is necessary since most of the traffic travels along that route, but what would be needed is maintenance to ensure its sustenance.
"It will make sense if they can maintain the work, but if you end up forgetting that the whole structure is yours [then it will crumble]. I think we need to reinculcate a culture of maintenance, not just in the private and public sector, but in the Ministry (of Works) itself," he says.
Echoing Gardener, McDonald, who has worked with the Public Works Department for several years, adds that mining in the area needs to be monitored, as well as river training instituted.
"If you straighten up the river and have it coming to the channels at right angles, you have to manage the mining better," he argues. But, according to McDonald, the National Works Agency, which is responsible for the project, hardly has the capacity to do that.
"The truth of the matter is, in some areas where we had the capacity to do that, we lost it. In the old Public Works days, there were people who could do that. I think the current National Works Agency is very fixated on building roads and not even maintaining the thing that makes the roads viable," he adds.
Earl Bailey, a disaster and hazard-management specialist, says no bridge across the ford would last for five years, due to the energetic nature of the Yallahs River. In fact, putting any infrastructure there, he warns, could make things worse.
"The bridge only works in conjunction with other engineering solutions that must take place upstream, which they are not doing. There doesn't exist any foundation in that area for structural measures to work, no matter how far they go down with the pipes. And if they go down a depth where the pipes are working properly, it wouldn't be cost effective," Bailey tells The Sunday Gleaner.
He says if Government is bent on building a bridge, it should consider a suspension bridge, but that would still depend on the ability of the foundation to hold it firmly in place.
One measure the Government should consider, he says, is to dam the river and direct the water supply to Kingston and St. Andrew, since that portion of the river is useless to people living downstream Yallahs.
No bridge will last
"They should dam the river, run a pipeline along the coast to take the water to Kingston, and use water from the Rio Cobre in St. Catherine for farmers who need it," opines Bailey, a lecturer at the the University of Technology.
Environmentalist Peter Espeut believes Government shoul scrap plans to build a bridge in the area. He says Government should fix the bridge on th route through Easington. The route is a longer one, but Espeut is of the view that no bridge across the ford will last.
"There is no way that any bridge can be built there. No matter which way you try to build, it will be undermined because the whole of that corner is a river bed," he asserts "The safest thing to do is to just make sure that th route - which is up by Easington - that bridge is sound by investing in a good bridge there," he states.
But residents don't seem to think that will work. Red Cap says the road in that area may need to be reassessed before that can be done, and several people could lose their homes in the process.
