Tourism Minister Felix Jimenez announced yesterday that the president of the Islas Baleares in Spain, Jaime Mata Paleu, pledged his cooperation in preparing an integral master plan for tourism development in the DR. This plan would take into account the ecological damage suffered and would strive to propose concrete formulas to resolve them and avoid future incidents. As reported in Diario Libre, the official said the plan calls for the construction of a single source of potable water for all hotel installations in the East, possibly the Sanate Dam in the province of La Altagracia. Furthermore, Frank Ranieri, in an interview with Alicia Ortega for El Caribe’s media group, said that the damage done to the area called for a direct Santo Domingo-Punta Cana route in order to bypass the La Romana detour as had been previously conceived, as well as the construction of new highways in the area to reduce vulnerability to flooding.