Power plant’s ash dump heralds environmental catastrophe

Santo Domingo.- The proximity of the Punta Catalina power plant is felt in the environment. It’s not the noise of the plant, which is practically imperceptible, it is a burning smell different from what’s normal in Peravia province (outh), an area where the combustion of sugar cane is commonplace.

“That smell … After the plant is that’s when that bad smell comes,” says Pedro María Aybar, an elderly man who works with crops around the yard that was set up to deposit the ashes of Punta Catalina.

Easily seen is a plateau of gray ash some two kilometers northwest of where the coal-fired power plant operates. It is an open-air patio to which these waste generated by the plant is transferred. Dump trucks and cranes are currently observed operating on the ashes, to unload the new ones and to flatten and moisten the ones that are already there.

The material, also known as fly ash, is used to make cement, purchased by local concrete companies, for Diario Libre however the situation will invariably lead to a “sanitary and environmental catastrophe.”