Greater Santo Domingo woke up on, Wednesday 25 December with inner streets of the barrios covered in great mounds on streets and sidewalks. Barrios like Capotillo, San Carlos, Villa Consuelo, Villa Francisca, Cristo Rey, and the areas of Luperon and La Fe, woke up to piles of refuse on nearly all of the streets. The problem goes beyond the traditional hangover from Christmas celebrations, where public services function at only half of their normal capacity. Over the holidays, the municipality of Santo Domingo North unilaterally chose to close down the Duquesa dump operation, causing the accumulation of trash.
The accumulation was expected, at least by Greater Santo Domingo city government officials, given the recent problems with dumping refuse at the Duquesa garbage dump, which has been going on for over a week. The combination of seasonal traffic jams, a growth in the volume of refuse due to increased commercial activities, and the usual reduction in the number of garbage trucks that service the city only served to compound the problem. At the Duquesa site, after returning to work at an acceptable rate, it rained on Monday 23 December, which warned of renewed deterioration of the roads and further slowing down of the work, although officials from the city governments that use the dump site said that they were dumping “little by little.”