Coastal Plains Highway Surface Breaks Up Near Gales Point

The rains are here and less than a year after it was officially opened, sections of the Coastal Plain Highway’s surface have been compromised by flood waters. Seventy-eight million U.S. dollars was invested into the construction of the highway. The Government of Belize boasted six million dollars in savings upon the completion of the road. Undoubtedly, the Coastal Plain Highway is a great service to residents along the stretch, as well as Belizeans commuting to and from the south. But, over the weekend, a portion of the road surface on the approach to the Soldier Creek Bridge cracked up and pieces were strewn across the highway. The Ministry of Infrastructure Development issued a press release informing that the location of the damage occurred at mile seventeen and a half because of flooding associated with heavy rainfall. The ministry says that a box culvert was flooded due to backwater from Soldier Creek about six hundred feet away. That issue was caused by blockage of the creek and deforestation due to the recent wildfires. We spoke with Chief Engineer, Evondale Moody, who further explained what led to the damages. 

 

Evondale Moody, Chief Engineer, MIDH

“What I found out this morning is that there are land clearing being done upstream whereby logging is occurring and of course we had the forest fires over the last two months within that area as well. And so what transpired you had blockage of the soldier creek itself and because of that it affected the overflow culvert we have on the approach to the Solider Creek Bridge. We have two culverts that are three meters wide by one point five meters high and those culverts were designed under the Coastal Plain Highway Project as overflow culvert for Soldier Creek Bridge. But they were never designed to accommodate all that flood water that was supposed to be passing under the bridge. So because of the blockage of the creek, that runoff was diverted to the tributaries that are the inlet for those culverts instead of going to the creek itself and under the bridge. Because if you may know, that bridge is similar to the one called Sibun Bridge. Both structures were built a long time ago and they have a clearance of ten meters highway. So we still had sufficient capacity and hydraulic flow under those structure. So the run off diverted through those tributaries significantly affected those two culverts because those two culverts did not have the hydraulic capacity to contain that water. So that overflowed the road there causing the pavement to be deteriorated. From what I saw on the site there was also a large log which is like the whole tree itself that was blocking one of the culvert that came down that tributary and we also observed there was no damage to the embankment of the road itself in that section.”