Holetown flood woes soon at an end

MEASURES TO STOP flooding in Holetown, St James, have been tried and tested, and high water rises in that town should be no more.This is the verdict of Paul Altman, developer of Limegrove Lifestyle Centre in Holetown, who told reporters yesterday: “We have had two similar [hurricane] seasons and we’ve been tested. The capacity of this area to deal with water is all up to how it is managed. We’ve used engineers, we’ve used the Government Drainage Unit, and all of the engineers have told us that what we have here has the capacity to deal with any extreme situation.”He said the Limegrove project had incorporated a concrete canal that was eight times the capacity of previous infrastructure in the area.“We’ve had two years to test it and we haven’t had any issues whatsoever from water in Limegrove or water anywhere else in Holetown. For instance, Apes Hill has built a lot of irrigation ponds. Those irrigation ponds have millions of gallons of water that normally would have run down here that is being trapped before it gets here.“We believe that what we have done here has not only taken care of the issues for Limegrove but has taken care of the issues for Holetown in general. We’ve had a number of things, in addition to our engineering works, that we have done here that would help to prevent and hopefully stop the flooding forever,” Altman said.