Santo Domingo.- The New York Times today reports on the challenges to develop the area of Miches, in Dominican Republic’s northeast, where the Cisneros Group recently announced an initial investment topping US$2.0 billion in a project called Tropicalia.

“It is 60 miles from the nearest airport, a three-hour drive on roads so bad the trip can be nauseating. Electricity is erratic, drinking water is contaminated, the beach in town is littered with trash and nearby rivers are either clogged with an invasive weed or plagued by silty agricultural runoff that threatens the fish on offshore reefs,” writes

It quotes Donald J. Melnick, of Columbia University’s Center for Environment, Economy and Society, who has been working closely with the Cisneros Group on the long term development goals in Miches, and narrating his experiences. “They said, ‘Look, we are poor, we don’t have very much, but we have Miches,’ ” adding that “ ‘But with all this development going on in the Dominican Republic, if you come back in 10 years, we will still be poor, but Miches will not be ours.’ ”

“That is what the project intends to prevent,” and adds that the Cisneros Group, a Venezuelan company that owns about a half-mile of beach out of town, paid for materials to build such bare necessities as latriens, “and community residents did the work.”

Again quoting Melnick, the reporter Cornelia Dean, of The New  York Times, said it was crucial to find an approach that would be “acceptable to fishermen, government agencies and science.”

It also quotes John Gagain, a Government official who’s also been involved in the ambitious project for the all-but-forgotten town, comparing the lopsided development of two areas not even 50 miles apart. “When you spend so much time poor and without any hope and any education and right next door is Punta Cana — they say, ‘Why not us?’ ”. “They need at least a foot on the ladder of development.”