NASSAU, BAHAMAS — King tide was identified as one of the main culprits behind last month’s downtown flooding, according to BRON Ltd Managing Principal Carlos Palacious.
“King tides are basically a time when we have super, super high tides and it has to do with the alignment of the sun, the moon and the earth; it makes a strong gravitational pull, which leads to very high tides, Palacious said during an interview with the local development consulting firm.
He said: “Those tides, as you can imagine, raise the water levels. When the water table is very high, there is nowhere for the water to go.
“The ocean is higher than it would normally be, as a result. Then, when we get heavy rain on top of that, we get flooding.
Kevin Sweeting, Managing Principal – Civil, noted modern development to the area prohibits a natural water cycle from taking place making the downtown area susceptible to such flooding.
“Flooding in and of itself is a natural occurrence,” Sweeting said.
“When we have rain, melting ice, storm surges, rising water, natural bodies of water like seas and rivers rising, and we have excessive amounts of water deposited onto the land; we have a lot of standing water.
“When that water now starts to affect us as humans and our natural environments, it causes a nuisance. It may inhibit or obstruct our movement and at worst, it causes damage to our structures and our infrastructure, so we now have flooding.”
He said: “Percolation is the main form of disposal of rainwater, so, the waterfalls from the sky, it hits the land, if that land is an open surface, like grassy areas or bushy areas, that water will now percolate into the ground and it goes back into the water table actually, so it’s actually a natural occurrence and it helps to replenish our groundwater.
“When we have development in cities and towns, and we now introduce buildings with roofs, pavements, sidewalks, parking lots, we now have impervious surfaces.
“These are surfaces that do not allow water to percolate through or seep through it naturally, ” Sweeting added.
Palacious gave further insight into the root cause of the flooding, noting that Bay Street is reclaimed land.
“So when we would have dredged the harbor decades ago, we would have used that to build Bay Street,” Palacious said.
“So, most of Bay Street is reclaimed, which means it wasn’t there before we filled it in.
“It’s very critical obviously whenever we’re altering nature – which was exactly what we were doing – that we make sure that we not only install adequate systems, like drainage systems, but we also maintain them.
“With the downtown area, unfortunately, our drainage system was designed a number of years ago – decades ago. So many of the pipes now would be full of water in king tide scenarios and therefore we get the backup and we get a lot of water that just can’t get out as fast as it’s coming down.”
Palacious continued: “We have the data to know what we can expect today and what we can expect in the future, and we know that king tide season for us in the Bahamas, is typically in the Fall through the Winter.
“We get the highest tides each year typically in that window, so we can plan for that, as a result, we can put in place the drainage and water management systems to deal with the future conditions.”
Loading ...
