While getting re-certified in SCUBA was an added bonus to visiting the Dominican Republic (DR), I really picked this island nation to see for myself what the beaches looked like at the mouth of the Ozama River. In 2018 the New York Times reported with eye catching photos and a horrifying story how waves of plastic were washing up on the beaches around Santa Domingo, the capital of the DR. Conscious of the fact that there is no "island of plastic" in the Great Garbage Patch, I wanted to see what a major polluter like the Ozama River looked like almost two years after a major clean-up took place. How much trash was coming out of a river like the Ozama into the Caribbean and out into the oceans?
I arrived in the capital before sunset and walked across the street from my hotel to a local park and beach to investigate the conditions. I was horrified, but not surprised at what I found.
When I returned to my room I became even more depressed when I learned my boat trip up the river had been cancelled. About a month before, when I was planning the trip, I reached out to two ocean clean-up groups and found that I could join Parley for Oceans https://www.parley.tv/#fortheoceans on a boat up the river. Now I was without a boat.
The next morning, while the hotel staff was trying to reach out to friends and relatives to help me secure a boat, I went back out to look at another beach area. Well, as it turns out , Jesus was watching over me. That is, Jesús, a local guide, found me wandering looking at the beaches at the mouth of the river. He showed me his government certified tour guide credentials and asked what I was doing. I regretfully didn't pay much attention to him at first since I was use to being hassled in various countries by locals seeking money and offering drugs. But he was persistent and polite and I thought I'd test him. "Jesús", I said. "I am in need of a boat. Can you help?" "Certainly, my friend", he said. "Let's go talk to Colonel Sosa and then find you a boat". With nothing to lose and two days time on my hands I followed Jesús through the city streets to the river's edge. As we walked it seemed like everyone knew Jesús. He was high-fiving shop owners, tour guides, and police officers, expressing good morning to everyone with an infectious smile. Was Jesús going to be my savior? I started to have more confidence when it just so happened that Colonel Sosa was at his post and gave us permission to take a boat up the Ozama. Turns out, Colonel Sosa is THE GUY you need to talk to because he is in charge of patrolling all boats as they enter the harbor and not anyone can just take a boat cruise up the river. He and Jesús embraced (no money exchanged hands thankfully) and we were off to go find a boat.
Just what kind of boat was Jesús going to secure us? The Ozama is not exactly the mighty Mississippi, but I was kind of hoping we'd find a sturdy boat. I grew a little leary as we approached a group of fisherman and looked at their rigs. I REALLY wanted to travel up the river and see the amount of plastic in the water and on the shores, but I didn't want to sink in the process. The water was indeed significantly polluted.
While I waited with several of the fishermen, someone went up the road on his moped and came back and said he found his cousin who agreed to take me up the river. This probably wasn't the best time to negotiate a price, but I was kind of surprised that this was actually happening before my eyes. In a half hour the cousin and his boat and another guy appeared and said, "climb aboard". I was grinning from ear to ear and just happy it was a "real" boat
with a motor. Honestly, I would have been happy to help paddle a dingy just to get out in the water to take pictures and video. Now we were headed up the river a few kilometers. Call me crazy to head out with a group of strangers, but my instincts told me I was in good hands. And it turns out I was right. What a day on the water getting to know Jesús and his friends and to see the river from their eyes....and my own.
I am having such a hard time wrapping my head around the real problem here. During rainy season, all the trash washes down the hills, into the rivers and rushes out into the sea. On this partly sunny day I just wanted to shout out at the people I saw throwing their waste into the river. I saw them from the bridges and I saw them from the village hilltops, all contributing to the single floating items in the the river, the pyramids of trash on the hillside at the rivers edge, and the collection of trash caught up among the Lily plants as seen in the video above. Collectively it's just gross and I just can't help but think that there should be an EASY solution. But what's invisible here, according to my boat crew, are the corporations, industrial plants and factories who dump much of the trash and toxic waste into the river at night. Even the hillside trash piles you see in the photos above, which, based on the shape and direction of the heap, would appear to be "constructed" by hilltop village residents throwing the trash from above. But Jesús is critical of the corporations who make it look like the trash of the residents. No doubt, with no trash collection coming from city government and public services, much of the trash IS coming from the locals. But what else are you to do with it? A blame game is not going to get this mess cleaned up. And according to Jesús, millions of dollars has been granted to the city government (much of it from the corporations themselves) to solve the issue and much of it just goes into the pockets of a corrupt government who turn a blinds eye to the companies who also fill their pockets. Humm, vicious cycle, right?
I continue to keep in touch with Jesús who sends me article clippings from the local paper that do show images of the trash in the river. I am happy to see that these articles are not being censored and I am hoping to get those reports translated from Spanish. The last article he sent dated 15 February, shows the Interceptor 04, an autonomous boat with a trash collection system created by Boyan Slat of Ocean Clean-up. If you are curious, here is more information about these boats.
These boats will most certainly help keep the trash from entering the Caribbean. But as my Model UN students point out in all the conferences I have attended these past six months, one major solution to the problem MUST come from companies changing their practices and finding alternatives to single-use plastic and they must be held accountable.
I am hoping to return to this river in the next few months to further engage with this problem. While many people warned me how dangerous it would be to travel up the river from the mouth, I found the people on the river's edge to be very friendly and my boat crew will put me in touch with their family and friends and together we'll go on shore and I am hoping to create a video full of interviews of the villagers and school children, asking them questions about what they see in the river and to listen to their stories. Based on my research and a similar video created in India, I am expecting to find a community of concerned people who feel helpless, yet might just have the answers we all need to hear.
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