FOR several years, the Santos family had to bear the brunt of flooding on their property, which is adjacent to Route 10 in Barrigada, and the deluge in the past few days has not made things easier. In fact, the family said the flooding has gotten worse.
Anthony Santos blames the problem on the expansion of Route 10 in Barrigada that occurred in the 1980s.
“Every time it rains, we go through a lot of suffering because the road was raised,” he said.
Yesterday, he walked through a foot and a half to 2 feet of water to get to his home from his parents’ house.
“As much as I would like to do some improvements to my home, it’s pretty much a waste,” he added.
Santos has already sought help from the government of Guam and has emailed senators. But only a few have responded to his pleas like Sens. Dennis Rodriguez and Tina Muña-Barnes. But there has been no follow-up.
“I know everywhere it floods and many of them are due I guess to Mother Nature. But in our case, it was due to the expansion of the road.”
Santos said Department of Public Works Deputy Director Carl Dominguez has already dropped by to take a look at the situation.
“He told me there’s nothing much more they can do,” Santos said.
He said Dominguez told him one solution DPW would look into was to get a pump to discharge the water onto the road. However, the water may just come back to the property.
“For me it doesn’t matter – whatever has to be done for a temporary fix, can we please get it done,” Santos said. “We are suffering here. We can’t really go into the house because of the flooding right now. All I’m asking is to make sure the water doesn’t go into my room because I’ve already encountered that before.”
Empathize
Dominguez empathizes with Santos and admits he was apprised of the problem last year.
The deputy director is on the ball, trying to resolve the matter and has already assigned a highway engineer to come up with at least five alternatives to mitigate the flooding.
“I’ll talk to the director about it and decide how to move forward. If anything, it’s going to cost money DPW doesn’t have right now. I predict that’s going to happen. We’re going to need money to fix this situation,” he said.
Dominguez also confirms the runoff of water onto the Santos home occurred after the expansion of Route 10. He was shown a photo of the home back in the 1980s by Santos’ father showing that the house was above the road. Now, it’s below the road.
Meanwhile, the Variety noted a home behind the Santos family where water was also seen flowing into the property.
Dominguez said there’s a slope that goes up leading into the main village proper of Barrigada that would go into the property and another slope next to the home.
“All that water is going into the Santos property. We get all this extra rain, it all flows into the Santos home,” he said.
One of the alternatives would be to move the family, but he doesn’t think the family would want to move. If the family were to relocate, the area would be used as a ponding basin.
Santos, on the other hand, hopes DPW can still fix the problem. But if worse come to worse, Santos said he may have to seek help from the federal government to investigate.
“That’s federal funding that was spent to expand this. My patience is already wearing thin,” he said.
