DR1 Daily News - Dominican Republic

In 2007, the foreign energy company AES was fined with US$6 million for importing rock ash wastes to the Dominican Republic. The rock ash was deposited in Samaná and Montecristi. AES paid the money in a deal where the Dominican government agreed to withdraw its claim against them in US courts. The money would be used for the final disposition and proper treatment of rock ash that had been shipped from AES power plants in Puerto Rico.

Now rock ash is being made in the Dominican Republic. The Punta Catalina coal-fired thermoelectric central, the largest infrastructure work carried out by the Medina administration, is producing the toxic waste and storing hundreds of thousands of tons of it outdoors. The National Committee for the Fight Against Climate Change (CNLCC) denounces more than 400,000 tons of rock ashes have already been deposited in an embankment located in the Batey San José, less than two kilometers from the power plant and less than 4 kilometers from Paya, that has a...