Barely four days after President Danilo Medina decided to reject the settlement affecting the lands around the Bahia de las Aguilas in the southwestern province of Pedernales, the Ministry of the Environment has produced a letter confirming the approval of an environmental permit for the Eco del Mar project (Echo of the Sea). The project belongs to an Italian investor, Augusto Aldo Meroni, and will be located in La Cueva (The Cave), just next to Bahia de las Aguilas. It includes the construction of 228 hotel rooms and villas. The “letter requiring payment” dated 25 February and addressed to Meroni as the project representative and promoter, says that “after the conclusion of the review and evaluation process of the Environmental Impact Study of your project “Eco del Mar”, code 6767, the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources has now prepared your Environmental license.” The Minister himself, Bautista Rojas Gomez, also confirmed the approval of the project.
In the letter the ministry requires the investor to pay for the license for a total of one million pesos, of which he had advanced RD$308,691.39 as of that date. The letter adds that: “in order to pick up the license you should present the original receipt of the performance bond payment, made out to the Ministry of the Environment.” The manner in which the permit was granted has led to questions from some quarters. The honorific representative of the state in the judicial process that covers the lands of the Bahia de las Aguilas, Laura Acosta Lora, says she does not understand how a license can be granted for a project whose lands have not been accurately surveyed.
Leading environmentalist Luis Carvajal, a member of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD) Environmental Commission, also thinks that the way in which the environmental license was granted is suspicious. “One aspect that looks suspicious is that here are people who have been waiting for years for the approval of an environmental license in situations that are much simpler and in areas much less complex, and this guy (Meroni) presents a project and despite the technical reports that advise against it, he gets the permit really fast, speedily, which indicates that there are “extra-environmental” reasons and beyond the debate itself over the technical nature, which leads one to believe that there is a determination to give that permit,” he said.
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