The Minister of the Environment stressed that President Danilo Medina is working to guarantee safe water for the island over the coming decades in the face of climate change. According to Minister Francisco Dominguez Brito, the ministry is working in order to provide answers to meet the demand for drinking water, the collection and treatment of sewage and the conservation of the nation’s watersheds.
He said “at the present time the government is committed above all to the watershed of the Yaque del Norte River. And in Santo Domingo there is the Roundtable on the Watersheds of the Isabela and Ozama rivers.” He noted that they are eliminating the breaking up of ships in both of these rivers and they are working towards the definitive elimination of the recycling industry and repair industry on the riverbanks because they discharge their waste into the rivers. He noted that the Ozama water treatment plant will soon go into operation and that some 25,000 persons who lived in La Barquita no longer throw their waste into the River.
In the long article in the Diario Libre the minister said in reference to the entire island, that the protection of water for the island in great measure has to be undertaken by the Dominican Republic, noting that most of the water for human consumption in Haiti comes from the Peligre Dam that is supplied by the Artibonito and Macasia rivers, both of which are born in the Dominican Republic.
Therefore,” he said, “if we do not establish a framework for the protection of these two rivers, 5 million Haitians will have only two options: a desalinization plant that they are not economically capable of operating or be at great risk of consuming contaminated water, or be forced to migrate to the Dominican Republic for lack of clean water.”
Domínquez Brito spoke at a high level meeting with members of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Inter-American Institute of Agriculture (IICA) that is focusing on the watersheds of the Dominican Republic.
9 February 2017
