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Saipan Mayor’s Office back to beautification focus
From cleaning up Super Typhoon Yutu debris, the Saipan Mayor’s Office is reverting to its original priorities for Saipan, which is to make the island as beautiful as possible for its residents and tourists alike.
Saipan Mayor David M. Apatang told Saipan Tribune last week that his office has reverted to prioritizing the beautification of the island since the devastation of Super Typhoon Yutu in late October 2018 forced the office to prioritize cleanup efforts.
“We are back to our regular operation. We are doing village re-beautification now,” Apatang said, adding that teams have started in Koblerville, San Antonio, Chalan Kanoa, and Chalan Piao.
“We are working our way toward the north,” he said, citing the Dandan area, San Vicente area, Kagman area, and the Capital Hill area. “We are cleaning the villages along the roads and raking a lot of the trash.”
Apatang further noted that he also has teams going around and doing bush-cutting work in the villages.
Even as they work toward restoring the beauty of the island, the mayor noted that many previous beautification projects were affected by the devastation of Super Typhoon Yutu.
“There was more debris than we had ever seen,” Apatang recalled. “People were throwing out trash and, even though many weren’t typhoon-related, they just [dumped] it in one place. That’s why there are trash flying around and we are now cleaning those up again,” he said.
Saipan Mayor’s Office field operations director Joann Aquino further noted that the Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality would be issuing a statement soon regarding their enforcement of the 1989 Anti-Littering Act.
According to Aquino, BECQ would go far as to impose fines, depending on the severity of the violation.
