Tuesday 10 December 2013

Mauritius 2 - The Return - Rain

Now I've seen rain and I've seen rain, but I've never seen so much rain that the drains decide not to work.
Mauritius is quite a rainy place actually, and it all tends to come in a few days so the effects can be quite severe. Earlier this year 11 people lost their lives in a flash flood caused by debris left during the construction of the new ring road holding back storm water until it burst and ran down the mountain.
The British built some hefty drainage systems in the 19th Century but as the population has grown and more space used for housing this has proved to be inadequate for today's urban landscape.
Normally, a thin trickle of water can be seen in the canals (that's what the storm water drains are called) making its way towards the sea, but just a few minutes after it rains, the canals can become raging torrents of rusty brown water enough to sweep anything and anyone down towards the sea.
And its not as if they are not deep enough, they must be at least 2m deep and 5-6 meters wide, so that's a lot of water.
Many people I spoke to very scathing about the lack of water management on the island and said that the Government should do more to capture the water and use it, that is not a debate I want to get into but there are options to use this precious resource.

Next update, probably later today will be the EUCOC update meeting held in Brussels on the 9th December and some of the actions arising from it.
We'll also be making a statement about the mooted CCA for the UK data centre industry and what this could mean moving forward.

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