Environmental survey in Tanapag begins today

The Division of Environmental Quality will begin conducting an environmental survey today in Tanapag to gather information that will help trace the presence of chemical contaminants, including polychlorinated byphenyls, in the village.

DEQ Director Ignacio Cabrera asked the cooperation of village residents as the agency’s personnel have scheduled home visits within the week to assist them identify possible PCB contaminated areas.

This will be the first time that an environmental survey will be conducted to help the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in carrying out its own risk assessment study.

Mr. Cabrera said samples of soil, water, root crops, fish, crabs, etc. will be collected within Tanapag village by U.S. EPA to be analyzed for contamination characterization.

“The DEQ sampling questionnaire interview and the U.S. EPA sampling effort may allow the identification of other undiscovered PCB-contaminated areas that may have been missed by the US Army Corps of Engineer during their previous remediation activities,” the agency said in a statement.

The survey will be conducted in the village on April 18 to 19, April 24 to 28 from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

During the interview, a DEQ staff will be placing a marker on the sites identified by the community as to where they recall a capacitor was once placed before they were moved around over the years.

“We would like to ask the people not to remove the markers because these sites will be used by U.S. EPA in the collection of soil samples for analyses, ” said Ray Masga, environmental planner at DEQ.

The electrical capacitors were left behind by the U.S. military in the 1960s but DEQ was only notified about their presence in 1988.
These capacitors were later on used in the village as boundary markers, road blocks for driveways, windbreaks for barbecue sites and headstones. Some capacitors were found open as their inner phenolic linings were used to decorate rooftops and cemeteries in the village.

Representatives from the U.S. EPA and its private contractors will be arriving next month to take the samples which will be brought to the U.S. mainland for analyses.

The U.S. EPA will also collect sediment samples from the drainage particularly from the area where the suspected dumpsite of the military was found in Upper Tanapag. Aside from this, sludge samples from the petroleum tanks that are still existing in the village will be taken as well as water samples from wells in the village and the Lower Base area.

Meanwhile, Acting Gov. Jesus R. Sablan signed a proclamation declaring April 22-29 as Environmental Awareness Week. CNMI Earth Day is on April 22, 2000.

The governor urged the people to stop the dumping of potentially hazardous materials into the drainage and help reduce soil erosion. “All the pollutants end up in our soil, air and ground and surface water. These contaminants end up in our marine waters, as well, which affect our delicate coral, and other marine resources,” he said.