| The Siltation Situation is Choking Yabra Fishers |
| Thu, March 23, 2017 |
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Remember the silt that swallowed up the sea at southern foreshore last year February? Well while that problem was addressed, it's now plaguing residents in the Yabra area. That sticky funky stuff is clogging the Yabra Canal and spreading fast. The fisherfolk who live in that area are feeling it the hardest because they can't pull up their boats. Today we met City Councillor Phillip Willoughby along with personnel from the Department of the Environment at the scene. There were assessing the situation in the canal to see what can be done. Willoughby explained how they plan on cleaning out the silt and what residents need to do to help:
Phillip Willoughby, City Councillor
"The residents from within this area have their concerns and we want them to allay those concerns to know that the city council is on top of it. We have agencies on the ground with us involved looking at the situation and basically we are doing this reconnaissance to get an assessment done and those recommendation then will be shared amongst the relevant agencies and we put a plan of action into play to try and resolve or rectify this anomaly here."
Courtney Weatherburne, 7News
"What's the cause of this problem? Like how do we get to this stage?"
Phillip Willoughby, City Councillor
"This is what the assessment and the findings that I believe the DOE is looking at and then we will have also hydrology in to look at what is creating this."
"What is compounding the problem though is the residents behavioral tendencies, all of us, the entire community - everyone. If you look along the routes of the canal that connects to east and west collet canal which connects to the Caribbean Sea, you will see a lot of garbage in the canals. You will see built up of silt. Whenever it rains, persons say 'oh you haven't clean the drains and then the flood and then my house flood, my yard flood.' But we are doing our part. We are the vanguards of the city doing our jobs. But we would like the residents to do their part and play their role to educate their child by not throwing garbage in the canals or even the parents of the adults - don't do that. Because there are repercussions for those actions. There are effects that you are affecting the entire community and the drainage of the city. So we will do what we have to do. Just looking at east canal and west canal, what my recommendation would be almost immediately upon receiving the vacuum truck - we can look at damming off in sections and then vacuum out the silt and cleaning out the garbage to create that flow."
We will keep following the work on the Yabra Canal.
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