So the water has gone wandering over the land again. This is another failure to add to the list of new wharves which go floating off into the gloaming, or recently reinforced sea defence works which cringe at the sight of the spring tide, or newly rehabilitated bridges which start to sag in the middle like cabbage-patch dolls, or resurfaced roads which look as if they have just been visited by a daisy-cutter bomb.

The breach in the dam of the East Demerara Conservancy, however, is potentially the most serious of all the infrastructural failures to date. It is not just the actual damage which was caused by the flood in Cane Grove which is a source of concern to the public, it is also the nagging fear that this could possibly happen again, and conceivably (although not necessarily) on an even larger scale.

The information on the failure of the dam which emerged last week was hardly a source of comfort. At a press conference

on Friday, for example, the media was told by Drainage & Irrigation Board engineer, Mr Ravi Narine, that seven other areas had been identified along the 28-mile dam which were in need of revetment, because of the material with which the dam had been constructed. He said that those areas were being monitored on a continuous basis and would be reinforced. Good news. However, he also admitted that the possibility existed of a breakage in any part of the structure.

What villagers in the area had earlier alleged was confirmed at the briefing, namely that bamboo groves at the back of the dam had been removed in order to raise the height of the structure. This vegetation, it was claimed, had served as an anchor to prevent slippage. Cane Grove residents had also alleged that the soil utilized to reinforce the structure was pegasse, which it seems was indeed the case. However, it would appear, according to a letter from Mr Malcom Alli published in this newspaper on November 7, that the dam foundation itself also consisted mostly of pegasse. This made it weak, he wrote, and for this reason he had opposed the raising of the structure's height in another earlier letter to Stabroek News. Mr Alli, an engineer who is familiar with the dam, had worked on the conservancy breach of 1968.

In our report of Monday, November 5, we carried comments from Civil Engineering Consultant within the Ministry of Works, Mr Walter Willis. He had observed, among other things, the lack of vegetation on the bank and cracks or pores on the surface of the dam which might have caused soil movement and erosion. He explained to this newspaper that during the rainy season water would penetrate the cracks or pores, causing a build-up of pressure on mud which had not fully consolidated, and in concert with wave action on the front face of the dam, could result in erosion. He referred as well to the loose nature of the soil type which takes some time to compress, and which is prone to crack in hot weather.

The reporter from this newspaper could observe with the naked eye that the dam was not straight, and as pointed out by a villager, that it lacked a consistent width.

The Government now has set up a probe team to investigate the causes of the breach, which will include looking at the design of the dam as well as whether the contractor was in compliance with the contract specifications. In addition, the investigating engineers will examine whether the work was adequately supervised and monitored. No problem there. However, one hopes that the report when completed will be made public in its entirety; the people of Guyana are entitled to know exactly what happened, and whether the design specifications of the project were at fault, whether the contractor was derelict or a combination of these.

Certainly, the closeted approach of the Ministry of Agriculture, which has declined to release a copy of the contract for reinforcing the dam to this newspaper despite the fact that it is a public document, is not the example to follow.

Given the recent history of hydraulic failures along the coast perhaps it is time that the Government look too at its human resource capacity in the engineering field, whether it has enough engineers, and whether it is utilizing all the skills available in its various agencies. One wonders too about the transmission of of knowledge concerning our drainage and sea defence structures from one generation of engineers to the next; in this case, for example, was information sought out on the history of the conservancy dam and the work which was done on it in 1968, before the project specifications were drawn up? Is this another case of a loss of institutional memory?

Finally, as the villagers at Cane Grove kept repeating to this newspaper, no one consulted them, and no one listened to them when they volunteered observations prior to the breach. Local residents are not engineers, but having lived with the dam all their lives they know a good deal about its conditions, and often have valuable insights to impart. On this occasion, they assured us, they warned about the danger of removing the vegetation at the rear of the dam, a warning which quite clearly went unheeded.