The Cibao-Sur Route already exists

The intensity with which a new campaign for the Cibao-Sur highway has begun in the media suggests that behind this push there are strong local interests that want to cut the distance between Santiago and San Juan de la Maguana.

In a democracy these campaigns are legitimate in the sense that each person or group has the right to express their interests in the media they feel is convenient, as long as they do not violate the rights of others.

Welcome, therefore, is this campaign because it keeps the issue on the table and allows us to return once more to argue regarding how inconvenient that it would be to take this highway by the route of El Rubio-Sabaneta, as some are proposing now, taking into account that there already exist several roads that follow more convenient routes.

I think that the proponents of the new route should sit down and calmly analyze, not just the environmental costs of this project, but also the financial costs of this investment and ponder carefully the negative and positive consequences.

We are not opposed to the Cibao and the South being properly connected since some time ago governments built roads for this purpose, roads that still exist and that only await that the state turns around and converts them into modern highways and well built.

One of these roads, Constanza-San Jose de Ocoa, crossed the very heart of the Central Mountains, with access from the Cibao by way of Jarabacoa and Bonao, and ending at the so-called Ocoa Crossroads in Bani.

Another route crosses the same mountains from Piedra Blanca to Las Carreras, passing through Rancho Arriba and San Jose de Ocoa.

The third, much shorter and further away from the Cibao, which also goes from North to South, crosses from Villa Altagracia to San Cristobal.

The fourth is the so-called International Highway, which partially serves as the frontier with Haiti and that also crosses the Central Mountains, connecting the towns of the Northwest Line and the surrounding countryside with San Juan de la Maguana by way of Loma de Cabrera, Restauracion, Pedro Santana, Banixa and Las Matas de Farfan.

The fifth road was opened recently and marks the best route possible between Santiago and San Juan de la Maguana. I refer to the route of Constanza to Padre de las Casas, which substantially shortens the connection time between both cities.

In few words, to cross from Santiago to San Juan de la Maguana, or vice-versa, through Casabito/Jarabacoa-Constanza-Padre de las Casas would cost any carrier a lot less time, fuel and effort that by any other route.

In order to be convinced, I invite the proponents of the new Cibao-Sur highway to examine the map of the country, not the little plan of roads and without mountains that the tourists use, but any other modern map that shows the terrain relief.

Studying this map, the proponents of the new highway should consider the environmental impact that this highway will have on the Central Mountains, its rivers and its forests. Some of those that ask for this sixth highway say that "it will not hurt the Central Mountains."

Good God, sirs! How can you say this? You are proposing that this highway cross, according to your own words, from Yabonico, near the Sabaneta Dam, to El Rubio of San Jose de las Matas, passing by the Altos de los Copeyes, Cruz del Negro, and Sidra de Toma, breaking into the forest reserves of La Leonor and Los Ramones.

For those that do not know the geography of the island, the route for this sixth and unnecessary highway will cut across the middle of three large national parks (Jose del Carmen Ramirez, Armando Bermudez and Nalga de Maco) and would put into an extremely dangerous position the headwaters of the Mao and Sidra rivers the main hydrological contributors together with the Magua and Jicome rivers to the Moncion Dam, on which many of today's harvests and aqueducts on the Northwest Line depend.

Enough damage has already been done in the country by the opening of numerous mountain roads without any studies, without drainage, without control of overflows, without proper management of the slopes, without waterproof paving, without calculations of gradients, and without taking into consideration the environmental impact with regard to conservation of water sources, to now return to insist on breaking into three national parks and begin to pillage the headwaters of the Mao and Magua rivers that provide water to the Northwest Line by means of the Moncion Dam, which, it so happens, is the only dam in the country that does not receive sediment from the erosion of its watershed.

Si someone wants to know what a mountain highway does to a river that feeds into a dam, you only have to take the Duarte Highwat to the Jatubey River, which crosses the highway three kilometers north of the Cruce del Abanico and empties, together with the Jima and the Jatubey into the lake formed by the Rincon Dam.

Before the construction of the highway from Casabito, the Jatubey was a wide, clean and fast flowing river. Today it is a huge riverbed of dry stones that has broken and will keep breaking its bridge on the Duarte Highway and increase it riverbed of rocks year after year due to the landslides that result from the slopes of the Casabito highway.

In a few words, it is a dead river which sends an enormous amount of sediment to the Rincon Dam.

Besides these brief commentaries, there exist numerous other economic, technical and environmental arguments against the opening of a new and destructive route to connect Santiago and San Juan de la Maguana.

We can refer to them on another occasion. But for the moment, we prefer to limit ourselves to invite, respectfully, the President of the Republic and his advisors to reflect on the financial and environmental costs that they will save the country if they rebuild the roadway from Constanza to Padre de las Casas with the same standard that they rebuilt the highways from San Juan de la Maguana to Padre de las Casas, Jarabacoa-Constanza, and Casabito-Constanza.

To those that are mobilizing public opinion with large demonstrations, I respectfully ask that they consider these reflection with reason and not passion, and think that a large part of the water that irrigates the farms in the Valley of San Juan and the Northwest Line and with which the aqueducts that sustain life in their cities are supplied comes from the national parks that the new proposed route will sure impact destructively.

I invite the experts in highways and the environmental technicians to offer their opinions so that this debate provides the solution for the road that is most convenient for the country and not to the owner of a farm in the mountains of La Cienaga in San Juan or some other place in the Central Mountains.