Mile 38 Still Not Repaired

A specific area that the Ministry of Works is monitoring is mile thirty-eight on the George Price Highway.  High rushing waters caused the culvert to collapse near Saint Margaret’s Village in June. It’s been almost five months and that heavily trafficked section of the highway remains with only a temporary fix.  Chief Engineer Lennox Bradley explains why.

Lennox Bradley

Lennox Bradley, Chief Engineer, Ministry of Works

“We had to really look at the nature of the problem, come up with possible solution to deal with the problem, come up with solution that would give you an appropriate or address a sort of return period that we feel for frequency for any flooding in that area would really be at a minimum for the public. It is not something that over night we decide we are going to go put this there. We had to do our little thing on that, a few weeks to do that. The surveying itself took a few weeks but our solution to that we have mentioned to you all we will put  a triple fourteen by fourteen size culvert there. It will enhance the hydraulics capacity compared to what was there before. We feel that will give us an appropriate address for rainfall for an appropriate return period. We have about around seventy percent of the culvert casted. They are right at the back.  They have to be properly cured. I think we have another two weeks before we complete the construction of the remaining  culverts, give it the one month curing period that those structures require and then, if you  notice we have already started part of the diversion. We just want to start because again we have to mitigate risks. We just don’t want to rush out there, dump something and then it gets washed out because the diversion that we will put there is not for a high return period. It will take us two more months and we could have then substantially completed.”