In a televised interview with Puerto Plata mayor Walter Musa, TV investigative journalist Nuria Piera revealed several inconsistencies and irregularities regarding the site the mayor has chosen for a new landfill for the city of Puerto Plata. There is concern the new site will bring more problems than the previous site.
During the TV show, Nuria Piera explained how the new landfill site does not comply with the Environmental Law 64-00 regulation that calls for landfill sites to be at least 1,500 meters away from human settlements. The new site is about 350 meters from the Cofresí residential and tourism area of Puerto Plata city and the township of Maggiolo. The Mayor defended the legality of the location.
In October 2018 a court had given the city government a deadline to close the present landfill that had been in operation for over 40 years and now was surrounded by urban settlements and near to tourism developments. Smoke from fires in the dump had already caused cruise ships to stop landing at the key Atlantic port of Amber Cove. Then on 16 March 2019, Mayor Walter Musa announced the problem had been solved through the purchase of a new site. The bad news is that it is only 800 meters from the old site, which was already too close to residential and touristic areas. Musa has been mayor of Puerto Plata since 2006, while the garbage management problem has escalated throughout the years without a solution.
In the interview, despite denials by the Mayor, Nuria Piera discloses the personal friendship ties between the mayor and the seller of the land for the new landfill. She also presented evidence that an environmental impact assessment study has not been carried out for the new site. The Mayor backs his decision to purchase the site on a technical report presented by the Dominican Municipal League and carried out by Dominicana Limpia, a Dominican government agency for garbage management. The report states that the landfill will have a lifespan of 12 years.
Furthermore, in her investigation, Piera found out that the city government has not carried out the property legal demarcation (deslinde), another violation of the procurement law that only allows government purchase of property that has undergone this process.
He argued that the technical study carried out by the Dominican Municipal League, the organization grouping city governments around the country, establishes the grounds for the feasibility of the project. In its conclusions, the technical report states: “The landfill site of the Municipality of Maggiolo is in an urban area of Puerto Plata in the opposite direction to the natural urban growth. The success of the sanitary landfill will depend on the selection of the landfill design expert and a good operator, supervised by whoever is responsible for the design. “
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16 April 2019