On my mind

Water shortage? The CNMI has a water shortage? Where? On the contrary, seems like what the CNMI—or at least Saipan—has is too much water! On the other hand, what Saipan does have a shortage of is water storage facilities—a place to put all the water it gets. If Saipan were able to catch more of the rain water—which has fallen in such abundance over the last several days—not only would we not have a water shortage, but we’d also have a lot less water damage from flooding and from erosion, which inevitably silts into and pollutes the lagoon.

The torrential rains accompanying storm/typhoon Tingting serve as a pretty powerful reminder that water catchment should not and cannot be ignored, either in general, or in particular in the process of providing 24-hour water to the people of the CNMI. The recommendation to make greater use of water catchment systems throughout the island—in residential as well as commercial and government sectors—is among the first five steps recommended by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in its “Water Infrastructure Development Plan,” which is serving as blueprint to the Water Task Force.

The task force, however, has put water catchment somewhat lower in priority, because, according to Don Smith, its chairman, the task force could accomplish the nine other top priorities in the time it would take to do all the work involved in improving Saipan’s water catchment capability. That task requires assessing each structure on island to determine what is needed to install a water catchment system that would meet EPA standards, and then finding the funds for doing so on qualifying structures—an effort consuming considerable time and resources, he explained.

That may well be true, but given that one of the major outcomes of the recently held Environmental Protection Agency conference was an acknowledgment of the effectiveness of public-private partnerships, and of voluntary cooperation, perhaps the Water Task Force could at least exert some power of persuasion to encourage residents and individual businesses to begin constructing their own water catchment systems. After all, every little bit helps!

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Tingting also reinforced the need for a project discussed during last week’s Environmental Protection Agency conference: the promise, by Steve Hiney, Solid Waste Management Division Head, that the division would soon be better able to handle storm and typhoon green waste through a super-chipper already on order. More recent information, however, indicates that the chipper costs were found to be too high, and that a smaller one is being considered. Perhaps part of the solution might be a number of smaller portable machines that could do the job at the site where the green waste originates?

At the moment, a rented chipper is being used. The mulch created by the chipper is available free from the Solid Waste Management Division, according to staffer Enrique Dela Cruz.

Tingting reinforced, as well, the need for a project that had been discussed in greater detail at a public hearing the week before the EPA conference: ponding basins to accommodate storm water runoff before it pollutes the lagoon. The hearing, conducted by a consultant to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, concerned the proposed location of three ponding basins between Garapan and Quartermaster Road where some of the heaviest runoff occurs.

Tingting may have caused considerable damage to parts of the CNMI, but it also served to emphasize, to remind us once again, of the need to enact storm and storm water runoff measures that have long been discussed, but whose actualization seems to be put off again and again.

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One last “achievement” one should credit to Tingting: the forceful reminder that one must know and respect the ocean, that its behavior is not to be taken lightly. Several deaths have occurred both in the CNMI and in Guam as a direct result of people being out in and on the ocean while the storm was still ongoing. Not to speak ill of the dead, but that would certainly appear to have been rash and risky behavior. The ocean is not man’s/woman’s natural environment. And in a foreign environment, it behooves us all to take sensible precautions, to treat the ocean with the respect it deserves.

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A follow-up to the EPA conference of a different sort: The 7-member Indonesian contingent that attended the EPA conference as well as the preceding All-Islands Coastal Zone conference here on Saipan did not have much opportunity to describe the nature of the environmental programs and activities in their bailiwick. According to a quarterly booklet of tourism information about North Sulawesi (part of one of Indonesia’s many islands) which they left behind, and with which five of the Indonesians are affiliated (the other two were from the national government), its Bunaken Island National Marine Park was recently chosen the global winner of the year 2003’s British Airways Tourism for Tomorrow award. The award raises awareness of the world’s leading role models for responsible tourism; the global program also recognizes organizations in the tourism industry, which have made a positive contribution toward their natural and cultural environment.

“In Bunaken’s case,” reads the booklet, “the award honors the efforts of the Bunaken Management Board and the North Sulawesi Watersports Association to eliminate destructive fishing practices such as dynamite and cyanide fishing while simultaneously improving the livelihoods of the 30,000 villagers living within the park.” The work was financed by a park entrance fee system, which funds a 24-hour joint villager/ranger/police patrol system, and allocates approximately 30 percent of the revenue toward village-level projects such as construction of public wells and toilet systems, mangrove replanting and school renovations.

The U.S. Agency for International Development project (with which my daughter Stacey is involved) has just completed a comprehensive marine tourism carrying capacity study for the reefs of North Sulawesi. One key focus of the recommendations will be a licensing system to ensure that both dive operators and dive guides have the proper knowledge and training to minimize their and their customers’ impact on the reef system. USAID’s Natural Resource Management project also funded renovation of the landing dock and entrance fee gate on Bunaken Island, and a planned state-of-the-art visitor’s center.

A survey conducted by reef scientists from the Ocean Institute’s Regional Center for Australia and the Western Pacific showed that Bunaken Island has the highest known within-location coral diversity they’ve ever recorded, with an average of 155 species per site. Moreover, the overall coral condition of Bunaken’s reefs was the highest average of all the sites the team had previously surveyed, including the Northern Great Barrier Reef, the booklet reveals.

In accord with the program developed by the USAID Natural Resource Management project, the work being done on marine conservation and coral reef protection in North Sulawesi will serve as a model for similar projects in selected sites throughout Indonesia’s some 3,000 islands (only half of which are thought to be inhabited).

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Short takes:

Some time ago this column commented on the fact that while revenue is regularly reported on a quarterly basis from both the tourism and garment factory sector, for the poker industry no such figures are provided. Well, the Director of Revenue and Tax has finally produced some figures—on an annual, rather than a quarterly basis. For 2002 gross revenue from the poker industry was $24,103,007; for 2003, gross revenue from the poker industry was $24,332,939. My information does not make clear whether this is based on a fiscal or calendar year.

And with my math handicap, I won’t venture further comments or comparisons with income from other streams. I prefer to leave it to the math gurus.

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While I don’t agree with Police Commissioner Ed Camacho that all tinting should be removed from motor vehicle windows—after all, tinting does cut down on the heat in the car, and therefore on the amount of air-conditioning needed, thus saving energy—I would agree with the bill before the legislature that permissible tinting shades should be better defined. Those black tints make it impossible to see through the car in front of you to what’s ahead on the road—a major traffic hazard.

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Now I’ve heard everything: Did anyone else catch the letter to the editor in Tuesday’s PDN? Where a tourist from South Carolina complained that wait staff in Guam’s hotels insisted on serving food from the left and removing it from the right, or serving it from the right and removing it from the right—when everyone should know that the correct way to do it is to serve to the right and remove from the left?

Guess he wasn’t there long enough to appreciate that many local people—both customers and, probably servers—are, first of all, left handed, so the opposite of what is deemed correct might seem more comfortable, and secondly, such formality is antithetical to island style living!

(The writer is a librarian by profession, and a long-term resident of the CNMI. To contact her, send e-mail to ruth.tighe@saipan.com.)