President Leonel Fern?ndez has assigned the task of policing the extraction of sand and construction materials from rivers and beaches of the DR to the Armed Forces. It has long been known that government contractors are responsible in great part for the annihilation of rivers around the country. The List?n Diario reports that intelligence units of the Armed Forces were assigned the duty of detaining trucks in the southwestern province of San Crist?bal suspect of illegal extraction of materials. Several ecological organizations have warned that the extractions must stop if rivers are to be saved. The military say that the main problem has been that there has been no supervision of the permissions granted for extraction and those authorized to remove construction materials have no limits as to where they extract nor the quantity of material extracted. Those with expired permits also continue to illegally extract materials as there has been no enforcement nor penalties to impede the practice.
