Former Minister of Environment Frank Moya Pons opposes the proposed construction of a new highway to connect the southwest and Santiago. The plan is for a new roadway to connect the cities of Santiago and San Juan de la Maguana. Moya Pons says there are already several roadways and that the government rather needs to improve them for easier transport. He says there are already five roads that connect the two destinations.
He mentions the Constanza-San Jose de Ocoa road, which crosses through the center of the Central Mountain Range, with accesses from the Cibao via Jarabacoa and Bonao, on its way to the Cruce de Ocoa in Bani.
He says that another road crosses the same mountain range from Piedra Banca to Las Carreras, passing Rancho Arriba and San Jose de Ocoa.
A third, the shortest, that also is in north south direction, goes from Villa Altagracia to San Cristobal.
There is a fourth north-south connection, the Carretera Internacional that partially serves as a border with Haiti and also crosses the Central Mountain Range connecting towns in the northwest with farm fields in San Juan de la Maguana via Loma de Cabrera, Restauracion, Pedro Santana, Banica and Las Matas de Farfan.
But he says that the fifth is the best route possible between Santiago and San Juan and is the route Constanza-Padre las Casas that considerably reduces driving time. He recommended that Dominican authorities reconstruct this road to the same standards used for the reconstruction of the San Juan de la Maguana-Padre Las Casas, Jarabacoa-Constanza and Casabito-Constanza mountain roads.
Moya Pons criticizes the proposed sixth route: Yabonico (near Presa de Sabaneta), El Rubio de San Jose de las Matas, Altos de los Copeyes, Cruz del Negro, La Sidra de Toma because it would cross through the forest reserves of La Leonor and Los Ramones. He says this route would cut through three national parks (Jose del Carmen Ramirez, Armando Bermudez and Nalga de Maco) and would seriously endanger the high basins of the Mao and Sidra rivers, key to farm irrigation and aqueducts in the northwest and the wellbeing of the Moncion Dam. He says that Moncion Dam is the only one that does not receive sediments that erode its basin.
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