Arrêté of 29 August 1944 prohibiting the creation or extension of marshy zones

The arrêté of 29 August 1944, reproduced in the Code d'Hygiène Publique of 1954.

Article 1 forbids degrading, altering or destroying in any way the irrigation-water distribution works and the drainage works established near urban zones for malaria control. Article 2 requires owners of rice fields and of land under mounded food crops in the immediate neighbourhood of large towns to declare them to the Service National d'Hygiène in order to obtain authorisation to continue or establish the cultivation. Article 3 makes that authorisation conditional on a favourable report from the agriculture department on the cultivation methods to be used. Article 4 requires owners not to let rain or irrigation water stand more than forty-eight consecutive hours and to drain it completely thereafter, to prevent mosquito larvae forming; Article 5 exempts naturally submerged zones and zones beyond the urban areas. Article 6 prohibits rice growing from 1 September 1944 in three named corridors under sanitation works: from Petit-Goâve to the Curtice habitation, from Les Cayes to the Gabions, and from Port-au-Prince to Carrefour on land either side of the national road within a 7-kilometre radius. Article 7 sets a fine of 50 to 100 gourdes or 15 days' imprisonment. Article 8 puts enforcement with sanitary police officers, rural and agricultural police agents and the Garde d'Haïti.

The instrument is where public health, irrigation and land use meet, and its named corridors are now built-up parts of the metropolitan area.