Yesterday’s DR1 News reported on the story carried in El Caribe, which told of the extraction of beach sand in the areas of Gaspar Hernandez. According to a local source, the extraction has been going on for years. El Caribe today again focused on the threat to the ecology of the area. The newspaper reveals the information that the local truckers syndicate had paid taxes and were using an expired permit to continue their work. Today’s El Caribe says that reporters were advised that the president of the Senate, Andres Bautista Garcia, had sent letters of support to the Ministry of the Environment in this matter. The head of the Environment Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, Alfonso Fermin, says that this activity is completely illegal. Worse yet is the fact that, according to renowned ecologist Eleuterio Martinez on the UASD and the Dominican Academy of Science, the sands are being extracted from very delicate wetlands that harbor many migratory birds and represent a unique ecological system on the North Coast of the Dominican Republic. Journalist Panky Corsino ends today’s article with the commentary of geologist Osiris de Leon, who states that the use of beach sand for construction purposes is impractical to begin with, since these sands and gravels have high concentrations of salt, which needs to be rinsed out before use in construction.