The Tribune

By Kathryn Campbell

Bahamas Information Services

Ministry of Works and Urban Development officials led by Permanent Secretary Colin Higgs and representatives of Urban Renewal 2.0 toured a seawall project in Cat Island Wednesday, April 16.

The project initially started at a cost of $1.8m and due to underground technical issues is expected to increase to approximately $2.4m.

The delegation included Cynthia “Mother” Pratt, commission co-chair of Urban Renewal; Ricardo Moncur, personal assistant to the Deputy Prime Minister; William Munnings, urban agriculture co-ordinator; Gregory Butler, deputy director and Michelle Reckley, deputy director of Urban Renewal 2.0 with responsibility for Cat Island.

Jackson McIntosh, Administrator for Cat Island and Rosetta Wells, Centre Manager for Urban Renewal in Cat Island also joined the group.

Eighteen residents of Cat Island are employed on the project which extends from The Cove to Smiths Bay and is now into its sixth month and anticipated to be completed by the end of May.

Ezra Russell, contractor and president of Marlin Enterprise, said the project has been progressing steadily.

“We started in The Cove with seawalls and drainage and now we are in Knowles on the last leg,” said M. Russell.

He explained that because of the increasing high water mark combined with the effects resulting from hurricanes it was discovered that roads were being eroded. Seawalls were needed to protect the road reservation.

“They wanted to go down to bedrock. We went down 10 feet, 12 feet and in some part we went down almost 20 feet,” Mr Russell said.

“The walls got deeper but it cost more because of the level of concrete that you had to pour, the amount of man hours we had to put in and then the excavation because once you have to go deeper you have to excavate more so the costs will go up.”