And the city canal is also being remodelled, however, the process is a bit slow. And in the meantime, residents are suffering from the stench caused by the stagnant water since the canal had to be dammed.
The project is funded by IDB and is ultimately supposed to help mitigate floods in the city. But with the canals not moving, it is a concern to the City Council since the hurricane season starts tomorrow. As such, they have written a letter to the Ministry of Infrastructure.
And they've also committed to continue cleaning out drains ahead of the rains.
Bernard Wagner, Mayor of Belize City
"The CVRP (Climate Vulnerability Reduction Program) has been an ongoing program and it started actually in 2017 prior to the 2018 elections and it involves different components. It focusses on Orange Street, Dean Street and King Street, because those were some of the hotspots in respect to flooding and it look at how we could do a redesigning of the drainage in that area so that they are connected. The drains supposed to be able to connect to the canals and the canals to the river and when flooding do occur those bridges that you see being constructed right now will automatically be put on and then the pumping station begin to pump the water out of the city. As it is right now the construction of those slews bridges required that the dam portion of the canal we have since written a letter to the ministry of infrastructure and ministry of works to ask them how long will this process be, because we understand the implications of those canals be dammed and when flooding start to occur and when rains begin to come later on June, July we don't want to see that type of flooding, but we continue to work with the ministry of works in ensuring that we try to clear as much canals, reshape as much drains as we possibly can. We will always suffer some measure of flooding given the fact that we are low-lying and that we are on the coast, but it's just a matter of mitigating those risks and I think our team have been doing so in visiting all the other areas. We are still not through as yet, we still have canals to dig, but we will get to those."
