Pedro Delgado Malagón
Santo Domingo.- The fluvial drainage of the city to manage the watercourses requires a technical, economic, and civic solution.
The engineer Pedro Delgado Malagón has suggested that it would be cheaper to move the capital than to solve the problem of river drainage in the present city.
He based his suggestion on the fact that what makes water control difficult is that the disproportionate growth of the city has taken place on “a limestone rock, a very permeable reef, full of holes, full of irregularities, of humidity, so the water rose and pressed a lining that had no function other than to produce an aesthetic effect on the wall to cover the rock.”
And the State does not have the budget to correct that.
In addition, planning has not kept up with the growth of the capital, so investments in river drainage infrastructure were not made in time. Although it could not have been foreseen that climate change would bring such extreme droughts and abnormally heavy rains as those that have occurred in recent times, it should have been expected that climate change would bring such severe droughts and hefty rains foreseen that the growth of the city would strip it of wooded areas that facilitate infiltration and that. As a result, the floods would be more significant, and the network of drains should serve as a channel without causing unfortunate havoc.
But there is also a civic problem.
In most of the city, garbage is scattered on the streets, sidewalks, and curbs.
The result is that the scuppers become clogged, and the drainage system fails to function.
This can only be solved when those who throw garbage receive a moral sanction from the rest of the mortals, without giving space to a complicit attitude, when economic and even penal sanctions are applied to those who observe this uncivil action, and when the garbage stops being garbage and becomes a financial resource that goes to the recycling industry before hiding in the scuppers.
If all this is not solved, the same evils will be reproduced in the suggested new city.