Govt agencies clean sediment chamber at Lau Lau Bay

The cleanup of the sediment chambers happened on Dec 16, 2016, as a collaborative work between the Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality, the MINA Tasi Rangers, the Saipan Mayor’s Office, and Department of Public Works. (Contributed Photo)

Several government agencies joined forces last Dec. 16 to clean out sediment chambers at Lau Lau Bay. The sediment chambers and stream crossings have been in place at the lagoon since 2010.

The Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality, Department of Public Works, and the Saipan Mayor’s Office, with the assistance of the Commonwealth Utilities Corp, work together yearly to maintain the area.

“Every year, we had to partner with other government agencies to go out and do the maintenance work. Typically, it is the responsibility of the DPW to provide maintenance for these drainages and these major roads, but we also feel they are quite challenged and that they have quite a lot of stuff on their list, so BECQ coordinate every year with the mayor’s office, DPW, and at one time CUC, to try and do the maintenance work at Lau Lau Bay,” said BECQ administrator Frank Rabauliman.

Back in 2009, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration awarded the Division of Environmental Quality with a little less than $3 million grant, which was used to fund environmental projects such as the setting of sedimentation chambers, upgrading of roadways, and improving drainages.

Sediment chambers are special chambers that trap sediment coming from land such as mud, sand, trash, etc.

“The NOAA grant was meant to do this—to reduce sedimentation for the protection of corals. We’ve did a lot of both construction and re-vegetation, and even studied the health of the corals in the bay,” he added.

Rabauliman shared that conserving natural resources should be a joint effort since it involves everyone.

“Even though [BECQ] puts all those protective measures, it requires maintenance, which falls on DPW. We want to continue seeing those measures be effective so that is why we came out and partnered with other government agencies,” he said.

Rabauliman said he even asked government agencies that have no responsibility over the environment to assist in the maintenance effort.

“The Saipan Mayor’s Office also partnered with us in many different projects. We reached out to them because we needed the manpower on this particular project and they were happy to step up,” he said.

The grant came from NOAA, one of the recipients of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, signed into law by President Barack Obama.

ARRA aims to save and create jobs in response to the great recession of 2007 to 2009. NOAA’s grant that was awarded to the CNMI, one of 50 recipients out of 800 applicants, was able to generate an estimated 100 jobs on Saipan along with protection of its national resources and additional security of the tourism industry by protecting an internationally renowned dive site.