Why Is Pinewood Gardens Prone to Flooding?

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NASSAU, BAHAMAS – While Tropical Storm Imelda is long gone, its impact reminds Pinewood Gardens residents of an issue they’ve dealt with for decades – flooding.

The storm dumping inches of rain all over New Providence but Pinewood Gardens perhaps getting the worst of it.

Some residents were trapped in their homes for days due as they waited for the water levels to go down.

So why does this happen? 

Executive Director of the Small Island Sustainability program at the University of The Bahamas Dr. Kristen Unwala explains.

“It’s hurricanes we see more precipitation, more rain happening, and the water table basically will rise water tables underneath in the land and normally rain falls down,” she said.

“It goes through the soil and then it just continues to add on to the top of that water table so with hurricanes with more storms with more rain happening, right even just smaller, rain events, we see that the water table will rise.”

And it doesn’t take much for Pinewood to flood.

“Just related to our human activity, so we see a lot of impervious surfaces, which basically means areas like roadways and houses that we have built that prevents the rain from going down into the water table and into the soil,” Dr. Unwala said.

“We’re also in the coastal region, very close to the ocean here and all of those factors combined means that you will see a lot of flooding that happens when you have any sort of abnormal rain events happening one after the other. When we have flooding occurring like this and the water sitting on roadways then it’s getting into contact with some contaminants and pollutants that we as humans just our environment as part of our normal every day activities with more time, sitting out and not being able to filter through the soils then you have the potential for being exposed to some of those pollutants.”

So what’s next and can the issue be resolved? 

“We need to collect alarm more data on and make a decision based on the evidence exists but we do know that there is a lot of flooding and we want to try to see that lessen overtime and I think we need to do some studies in this region, to see what can be done,” she said.