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Jules Vasquez reporting
The genesis of the municipal drainage project was in 2008 - when any extreme weather event would produce major flooding in the new phase of Belama:

Phillip Willoughby, City Councilor
"If you would recall at the time fresh into City Council, it was the year 2008 and I stand corrected. The Dean Barrow administration just recently elected to office had to deal with this first flooding event."

Fast forward to 2015, and nearly 22 million dollars has been spent on drainage - much of it in Belama. But already, garbage is clogging this freshly cleaned canal.

Even while they work on cleaning it, more garbage is being thrown here:

Phillip Willoughby, City Councilor
"To admire the infrastructure is one thing. That is physical. Keeping in mind now to this point, at least about 20 plus 15 cubic-sized dump trucks have transferred garbage or waste material from within this canal and surrounding areas. It cannot be business as usual. We cannot continue to live in this style and fashion. Now it can't be now that another month or so from now an additional 20 loads of material garbage would have to be dredge from these canals waterways to be carted away. That's money - that's a huge substantial amount of money that can go into additional infrastructure work."

But what about additional infrastructure work for the southside? As we saw last year, they are most vulnerable to floods, and the housing stock is the poorest:

Jules Vasquez
"Is there an excessive fixation on the Northside when in fact the south side is the most vulnerable and most flood prone?"

Rolando Chan, Project Manager, Flood Mitigation
"Well this is a pilot project. I exactly don't know what will be if the government if the day foresee other project in relation to flooding. So at this point I cannot say. It's only for this area."

So, we'll wait and see how long it will be before meaningful drainage relief comes for the southside.