Previous Story
Delayed SSHS windmill project an ‘eyesore’—Sablan
Education Commissioner Dr. Rita Sablan reiterates the call to get a stalled turbine project off Public School System property.
The dysfunctional windmills at Saipan Southern High School are an “eyesore” and create noise that generates “a lot of complaints from the community around it,” according to Board of Education chair Herman Guerrero.
Sablan said the project was originally a $10-million renewable energy project for public schools.
While other projects have gone forward, the project at Saipan Southern High appears to be the “only defective one,” she said.
“They built on our property because we endorsed non-renewable energy,” she told Saipan Tribune. “If they install something that doesn’t work” then they should “get if off our property.”
The company working on the project had missed the March 31, 2015, deadline. According to the commissioner, this was one of the several project extensions given to the company.
Guerrero said around that time that if the company is “not going to work [on it], then perhaps they need to remove the equipment from our property, because it’s just going to create problems for us later on.”
As reported in 2011, the Division of Energy gave PSS approximately $2.4 million from the $6.5 million it received from the U.S. Department of Energy for Renewable projects for the completion of this project.
The project was awarded to Pacific Green Integrated Technology Inc. and Pacific Wind & Solar LLC in September 2010.
PSS is not the expenditure or contracting authority for the project; it’s the Division of Energy.
Both Sablan and Guerrero said the Attorney General’s Office is looking into the matter.
