Rising water in Content, Manchester, could take weeks to recede, WRA indicates

The Water Resources Authority (WRA) has indicated it is still unable to say when rising groundwater in Content, Manchester, will start receding, but is “hoping” that it will soon start to balance out before eventually receding.

Peter Clarke, managing director of the WRA has suggested it could take weeks for the water to disappear once it starts receding, noting that it took three weeks when the area was last flooded in June 2002.

Significant rainfall before and during hurricane Melissa and the slow pace at which the water is advancing underground have been cited as the reasons for the rising ground water levels that have inundated homes in Content.

Several homes and roadways have been flooded by the rising water.

Clarke told a media briefing on Thursday that initial monitoring revealed that the water has risen “roughly 300 feet” from the normal level.

“A little bit more now because it has also popped out and is coming up out of the ground in these areas,” Clarke said.

He disclosed, too, that the WRA has installed monitoring gauges in the area, which have revealed that over the last two weeks “a ground water rise above surface of about one foot per day”.

“Which is a very high rate of flow for this area,” he said, noting that there has been “a little bit” of fluctuations.

The WRA managing director noted that there are a number of caves, caverns and conduits beneath the lands in the Content area as a result of the limestone aquifer.

But with the excess ground water flowing into the area in recent days, Clarke noted also that it does not advance underground “as fast as a river flows above ground”.

“So because it advances slower and we had a lot of rain through Melissa and a lot rain before Melissa it means that our aquifer, in simple terms, filled up,” he explained.

“And since it can’t go forward as much, it has been rising instead.”

Clarke noted that there are sink holes in the area that normally “drain the water away from the low-lying areas”.

“But in this instance because the aquifer has so much water, which is under so much pressure, it is pushing water up the sink holes,” he reasoned.

As a result, the WRA managing director said the sink holes are having a reverse effect and “that is where most of the water is being sourced from that is coming into the Content area”.

Clarke said the WRA is unable to say when the situation will change, but is “hoping” that it will soon start to balance out before eventually receding.

The area also saw a major flood in 2002 and “a very serious flood” in 1977 that killed two people, he recounted.

The WRA is also monitoring floodwaters in New Market, St Elizabeth; Chigwell, Hanover; and Moneague, St Ann.

Clarke noted that there is some amount of flooding in Cambridge, St James, but said this is not caused by ground water.

Instead, he said it is the Sevens Rivers that has broken its banks.

- Livern Barrett

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