Permanent fix to Tumon flooding will take lots of money, engineering

Pleasure Island -- the epicenter of the tourism industry. The heart of the Tumon visitor’s district. But when it rain--it floods. 

"So what it is, GVB right now has the contract to clean out the storm draining in that area," Public Works Deputy Director Jesse Garcia said. "So as you know...the area down in Tumon when it's high tide and it rains really hard the water doesn’t flow out until the tide gets to a low tide situation where the water is able to clear the ponding basin."

The Guam Visitors Bureau, with bond funding from the Guam Economic Development Authority, has been trying for years to figure out how to mitigate the flooding. Most recently, DPW has stepped in to help clear out debris accumulating in the storm drains.

"Because of the silt not being able to flow in the ponding basin to clear when its full right, so the silt builds upon inside the box, so the box is really filled up with a lot of silt," Garcia said. "So the key there is to have it, to get some kind of maintenance to have it jetted out or pumped out."

But the permanent solution, Garcia said,  will cost a lot of money. They can build a much bigger ponding basin or a pumping system that can expel the overflow much further away. 

"It's all about planning and stuff," he said. "But that's the way it was for years, so try to correct the problem now you would have to take a lot of engineering to figure out how to take that water out."