The damage is affecting a green space recognized as Orlando Jorge Mera Park
SANTO DOMINGO. – Community members from the Invidorex sector, in the municipality of Santo Domingo Este, made an urgent appeal to municipal and environmental authorities to stop the destruction of a protected area located at kilometer 14 of the Las Américas highway.
The residents, who have the support of the Unión y Progreso Neighborhood Association, explained that archaeologist Domingo Abreu Collado, from Espeleogrupo, carried out a descent in the area and denounced that it is a sinkhole that is part of a whole active system in the area, with important aquifers that is about to be filled with rubble without the purpose being known.
“All the vegetation that emerged from that sinkhole was eliminated, and the vegetation that surrounded it as well,” the speleologist (studyer of underground cavities) and environmentalist pointed out, who transmitted the information to the community members of Invidorex.
The specialist urgently requested the Santo Domingo East City Council, the Ministry of Environment, the central government, the National Congress, and the Ministry of Housing, Habitat and Buildings to take measures to stop the ecological damage that is underway.
Abreu Collado specified that the affected area is part of the large "Eye of the Americas" aquifer, an area protected by Law 64-00 of Environment and Natural Resources and by decrees that require protection for all caves and caverns, in addition to establishing protection for the entire cliff that runs from west to east, up to Higüey, 175 kilometers of fresh water aquifers, useful for several coastal provinces.
“The alleged owner of the devastated space says he has permits from the City Council and the Environment Ministry, that even the President knows about it, and that his purpose is to prepare the land to sell it,” the environmentalist said.
He also reported that heavy machinery was operating at the site and warned that they would not allow the sinkhole to be filled in. He stated that one cannot speak of development when nature is mutilated in broad daylight with impunity.
“And you can’t talk about leadership when those responsible for protecting the land hide behind desks, while our common home is devastated without mercy or shame,” he said.
Recognized for its ecological value
According to community members, the Invidorex sector, Los Farallones del Hipódromo, in Santo Domingo Este, has been for decades an area recognized for its ecological value and its importance as an underground tributary of the Brujulea River.
It is a small green lung with a circular crater of more than a thousand square meters, with mobilization ducts that allow crossing the street, recognized as Orlando Jorge Mera Ecological Park, in the middle of the land, where majestic mahogany trees flourished that today lie cut down by ambition.
A territory that was protected in past administrations and that today suffers an unpunished environmental massacre, orchestrated from the shadows by an organized structure of power, business and institutional complicity.
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