Government is tightening up on the issues of flooding and drainage management with legislation to ensure public compliance with mitigation rules.
Deputy Prime Minister Santia Bradshaw said the Storm Water Management Bill, 2025 debated in the House of Assembly was needed “to ensure that we are able to integrate flood plain management; address the issues of pollution control and to be able to have a governance structure that allows the entities tasked with carrying out the important functions of overseeing storm water, to be able to do so with the teeth that is required by law”.
The provisions set out in the legislation are designed to address “the management of storm water; the planning and execution of works necessary to prevent and control flooding and inundations caused by excessive rains and high tides and the prevention and mitigation of injury to persons and damage to property from the effects of the movement of water, particularly storm water”.
Parts of the bill speak to the duties of owners and occupiers of land, the duties of land developers, spelling out the responsibilities of each, with fines as high as $20 000 being proposed for breaches.
Bradshaw said the legislation would make for “a more comprehensive approach to storm water management”.
There is a section which proposes stiff penalties for property owners and developers who impede water courses, while another section requires planning submissions, relevant to this area of development, to the Department of Planning.
“The person who contravenes this section is guilty of an offence under the new legislation and is liable on summary conviction to a fine of $20 000,” the Leader of Government Business said, adding: “The feeling in the Drainage Unit is that in order to send a very strong message of how serious we are, whether it is obstructions which will create offences, we needed to ensure that the penalties were stiff penalties.”
She noted the Drainage Unit was experiencing blockages in places where land owners had obstructed the natural flow of water by encroaching with structures such as walls, which impeded access by the Drainage Unit when work had to be done in the area. The legislation will address this, Bradshaw warned.
People who dispose of waste water and other waste in gutters and waterways have also been put on notice they could face prosecution under the proposed legislation.
Bradshaw pointed to the tragic death of calypsonian Carew (Neville Blackman) on August 3, 1995, when his home in Weston, St James, was swept out to sea during a flood as an example of the disaster that could occur if concerning areas cited in the bill were not addressed.
