Counter-Expertise Mission on the Rising Level of the Étang de Miragoâne
- A second-opinion mission, 23 March to 2 April 2009, on why Haiti's largest freshwater lake was rising.
- The team combined professional divers with a chief Ponts et Chaussées engineer, pointing at a submerged structural cause such as the outflow.
- A clean case of a slow-onset hazard that displaces people without a single disaster event.
The Étang de Miragoâne is Haiti's largest freshwater lake, and a sustained rise in its level threatens the settlements and farmland around its shore. This dossier is the report of a counter-expertise mission, meaning a second opinion commissioned to test an earlier explanation, conducted between 23 March and 2 April 2009 under the Republic of Haiti with the French Embassy in Haiti. Its composition is the interesting part: an underwater and professional-diving expert from Martinique, two members of the Haitian firm Eccomar including its president, and a chief engineer of the Ponts et Chaussées corps. A team assembled that way is looking for something submerged and structural, most plausibly the condition of the lake's outflow, rather than modelling rainfall. For a territorial library the case is a clean example of a slow-onset hazard that displaces people without any single disaster event, and of the state commissioning independent technical review before acting.
How to cite
Government of Haiti; Interministerial Committee for Territorial Planning (CIAT); Embassy of France in Haiti, 2009, Counter-Expertise Mission on the Rising Level of the Étang de Miragoâne, http://ciat.gouv.ht/sites/default/files/docs/Etang_de_Miragoane%20_FR.pdf