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FROM
CUBA
Tourist
causeway in Cuba: Hurting the environment and
going nowhere
CIEGO DE ÁVILA, Cuba, October (www.cubanet.org)
- For years now, the Cuban government, in its
ever-expanding quest for the hard currency brought
in by tourism, has been building causeways to
cays off the island's coast which concerned environmentalists
have called ecological disasters.
Now tourism authorities have realized that one
almost-completed causeway must by dynamited back
to rubble because the cay to which it leads only
has about 200 feet of beach.
The causeways, initially built to cays off the
northern coast of Cuba in the central provinces,
consist of accumulations of stone dumped on the
sea bed to the point of providing a roadbed over
the water.
More recently, the government started building
the causeways to cays off the island's southern
coast, including a 21-kilometer (about 12-mile)
causeway to Providencia cay, reputed to be a divers'
paradise.
Construction was halted almost a year ago, and
now the partially-built causeway is awaiting demolition
after authorities discovered the cay has very
little beach frontage.
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