‘Impacts of proposed CJMT program being reviewed anew’

The U.S. Navy is now conducting a second National Environmental Policy Act review to assess the environmental impacts of the proposed CNMI Joint Military Training program, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The assessment includes the cumulative effects of all of the training the Marines would receive in the CNMI from relocating Marines from Okinawa to Guam, according to Joshua P. Wilson, trial attorney of the DOJ Environmental & Natural Resources Division.

Wilson is counsel for the U.S. Navy, Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer, U.S. Defense, and Defense Secretary James Mattis, who are being sued by four environmental groups for the decision to relocate 5,000 U.S. Marines from Okinawa to Guam and to conduct live-training on Tinian and Pagan.

The Tinian Women Association, Guardians of Gani, Pagan Watch, and the Center for Biological Diversity are suing the defendants for alleged violation of NEPA and Administrative Procedure Act.

In a motion for summary judgment filed before the U.S. District Court for the NMI last Friday, Wilson said the NEPA claim is unfounded because these two major federal actions have independent utility, and because the Navy is now studying the cumulative impacts of all training proposed to be conducted in the CNMI.

Wilson said the groups allege that the defendants violated NEPA when the Navy issued its final supplemental environmental impact statement for the relocation of Marines from Okinawa to Guam because the Navy did not also study in that same environmental review the impacts of a separate and non-final proposal to conduct a comprehensive joint military training program in the CNMI.

He said plaintiffs allege that the Marine relocation and CJMT program are “connected actions” or, in the alternative, “cumulative actions” whose “cumulative impacts” must be studied together in a single environmental impact statement.

Wilson, however, stated that the record shows that the Marine relocation to Guam is directed by a formal agreement with Japan, and holds diplomatic and strategic significance independent from whatever long-term training Marines in Guam might receive in the future.

He noted that the record also shows that the Navy fully evaluated through a comprehensive NEPA review and full environmental impact statement the effects of the training that the Navy determined the relocating force would need on Guam and the CNMI.

The DOJ attorney said these two separate, major federal actions are not related.

He said the Marines in Guam are among those forces that will participate in the training offered by CJMT, should that program proceed and be implemented.

“But the Marine relocation has clear independent utility from the training upgrade proposed under CJMT and will proceed regardless of the ultimate fate of CJMT,” he said.

Wilson said the U.S. and Japan have determined as a matter of diplomacy and allied military strategy to station Marines in Guam instead of Okinawa.

He said the Navy’s decision to limit the scope of the relocation EIS to the environmental effects of the relocation—and the training necessary to effect that relocation—rather than the full measure of potential, desired training in the Western Pacific, is well within agency discretion.

He said the Navy is meeting NEPA’s core concerns by fully studying—through two comprehensive NEPA reviews and two environmental impact statements—the total environmental impacts to the CNMI of the Marine relocation and the proposed CJMT program.

The groups recently filed a motion for summary judgment. Through their counsel, they stated that if thousands of U.S. Marines are stationed on Guam, the northern two-thirds of Tinian will be blanketed with mortar and artillery bombardment.

Amphibious landing craft will invade Tinian’s beaches, destroying precious corals, said David L. Henkin of Earthjustice and Kimberlyn K. King-Hinds, who are counsels for the groups.

The groups claim that Navy and Defense have violated NEPA and APA by failing to consider the relocation efforts and potential construction of live-fire training ranges on Tinian and Pagan as “connected actions” in a single environmental impact statement.