The Ministry of the Environment solid waste policy advisor, Domingo Contreras, has told reporters that the model of the Duquesa refuse dump, as it has been presented, only has three or four years of use remaining as about 5,000 tons of garbage are dumped per day. These figures come from the current site administrator, the Santo Domingo North City Council. Given the precarious situation, the question to the city governments must be asked: Do you have a Plan B given the eventual closure of Duquesa? Rafael Hilario Medina, who is in charge of Urban Cleanup for Santo Domingo East City Council, told Diario Libre: “I do not think that any of the city councils in Greater Santo Domingo or the commonwealth has a Plan B that will allow them to stop dumping at Duquesa.” This site is used by Santo Domingo East as well as Santo Domingo North, Santo Domingo West, the National District, Los Alcarrizos, La Guayuga, Pedro Brand, La Victoria and Pantoja. The last two municipalities send very small amounts of refuse to Duquesa. Hilario Medina said that Santo Domingo East has a transfer unit in which part of the solid refuse that is collected during a day or more, offers the local government a sort of buffer during crisis situations, which arise mostly during the rainy season or when the road gets really bad. In the case of the municipality, the medium term answers are an electricity-generating plant, recycling, and the use of biological materials such as fertilizer. “What is most important is that the city benefits without having to make any investments,” said the general secretary of Santo Domingo East, Juan Lopez.
Meanwhile, the general secretary of the National District City Council, Andres Navarro, said that in the case of the capital “there is no physical space in which they could hide, save or dump garbage during a crisis, which magnifies the appearance of garbage during those times.”
“We have a transfer unit. But what is true is that we cannot dump our garbage. In just 12 hours all of the trucks, the transfer point and the trailers would be full of garbage,” said the city executive. Navarro said that one response to this problem is to extend the so-called transfer units and convert them into centers where value can be given to the refuse. In Santo Domingo West, the conditions are just as critical as in the National District, where the garbage is just transferred. The Director of City Cleanup for Santo Domingo West, Ramon Lantigua, said that given a future without Duquesa, the solution would be to find a solution with the municipality of Haina, which also has a garbage dump.
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