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The city of Roselle in St. Thomas will be building a seawall after the old seawall was damaged by recent Hurricane Beryl.
The Roselle main road is part of the Southern Coastal Highway Improvement Project (SCHIP), but Premier Andrew Holness explained that the damage to the road was not the fault of the project or the contractor.
“This stretch of road was affected by the storm surge and flooding. There was already a wall so we didn’t need to intervene when we were repairing the road, but the cyclone damaged the wall. In fact, it completely destroyed the wall and washed onto the road,” the prime minister told reporters during an inspection on Wednesday (August 14).
“This is something the government has to do as a supplementary work, which means we have to increase the budget because of the hurricane to build the seawall,” he added.
Holness said seawalls are “not the last or even the most effective defence” and other revetment projects and other forms of protection may be needed.
He believed a more appropriate solution would be to realign the road away from the coast, but the government had made a strategic decision to support existing residents, communities and businesses.
“If you think about it, if we move the road inland, what will essentially happen is that the community on that road will eventually die because the vehicles passing through will choose to use better roads instead of this road. What we want to do is encourage development in the area, so we decided to keep the existing route and fix it, but it will add a lot of trouble,” Mr Holness said.
But he noted that in the long term, the government’s intention is to build another road further inland and establish new communities along those roads.
In fact, Mr. Holness said development and land identification work for the Port Antonio Bypass project has already begun.
“So we’re going to build the Port Antonio bypass and then over time connect that bypass to a road further inland that will connect us from Harbour View to this section of Yallahs. So, we’re still going to have that road. It’s still going to be in good condition, but over time our goal is to move the commercial, residential and other activities inland and then turn that into a more scenic, more touristic route so that if it’s affected by weather, it won’t be as bad,” the Prime Minister said.
Meanwhile, Dionne Sampson-Russell, technical manager at SJE Consultants, explained that the damaged section of the Russell main road will be rebuilt with a new rubble wall to protect the road and all existing infrastructure.
“So, currently, contractors have started clearing the debris, removing the collapsed wall sections, and have started excavating. The wall will be five metres deep, and then we will have at least 1.5 metres of the wall buried underground so that we have a good foundation or protection,” she said.
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