Today’s Diario Libre, Tuesday 14 May, publishes an open letter from a private citizen, Norman Sainz, to President Danilo Medina. Sainz warns that the Cibao-San Juan de la Maguana highway has been discussed since the days of the Trujillo dictatorship and was rejected for the same reasons it should be today. He writes that instead of building the highway, many years back then President Joaquin Balaguer wisely created the national parks that protect the area. President Danilo Medina recently gave the go-ahead for the construction of the roadway that would cross through two national parks.
Sainz says that the Medina administration should instead order the reconstruction and expansion of the Carretera Internacional that crosses the island south-north along the border with Haiti. He says that road would benefit all the border provinces and would encourage large investors to establish agribusinesses in the area, backed by Law 28-01 on Border Development.
“One does not have to be an ecologist or a geologist to realize that rivers are not born in all mountains in a mountain range. God selected certain hills and mountains to capture the condensation of the area and bring it forth and in others the waters are underground. Do not allow a single mountain where rivers and streams are born to be touched under any circumstance, let alone the only part of the island that has not been deforested by humans. Do not become known in history as the President who authorized the destruction of the environment in the area where most of the country’s rivers are born,” he writes.