Landfill cells maxed out ‘in a little over 5 years’

Department heads answer questions on infrastructure demands during a Senate hearing yesterday. From left, Department of Public Works Secretary James Ada, Division of Coastal Resources Management director Fran Castro, Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality Administrator Frank Rabauliman, and Environmental Quality director Ray Masga (Partly hidden). (Dennis B. Chan)

If construction paces as planned, environmental and public works officials expressed fears yesterday that the CNMI would not be able to handle the amount of solid waste generated by existing and new developers that, by their count, would max out several Saipan landfill cells in a little over five years and bring the hotel room count well-over 8,000 rooms.

“If I were to pinpoint one infrastructure that we, in my personal opinion, may not be able to address—that’s solid waste,” said Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality Administrator Frank Rabauliman during a nearly three-hour hearing with the Senate Committee on Resources, Economic Developments, and Programs yesterday morning.

Led by Sen. Arnold Palacios (R-Saipan), the senators wanted to know how major development would impact solid waste capacity, among others, and how the government could plan for this.

Best Sunshine International, Ltd.’s Grand Marianas Casino resort and Honest Profit’s Saipan Resort Hotel on Saipan, among several others in the CNMI, lead a pack of developers with approved major siting permits who construction plans add another 4,400 hotels, and their resulting human traffic and solid waste demands.

According to developer chart from BECQ this month, developers eye completion dates as early as this year and 2019 and will bring the hotel room count to 8,271 room and require 10,628 employees. The existing hotel room count stands at 3,547.

Responding to a series of questions from Sen. Justo Quitugua (Ind-Saipan), Enrigue Dela Cruz, solid waste director of the Department of Public Works, disclosed that filling of “cell 1 and 2” at the Marpi landfill would “take us about to a little over five years.”

“If we are going to fill up” the cells in five years, Quitugua responded, “that’s short, that’s tomorrow.”

Last November, BECQ reported that that enormous amount of trash and debris collected in the aftermath of last year’s Typhoon Soudelor had “significantly shorted” the lifespan of the landfill’s cell number 1.

Yesterday, Rabauliman also pointed to discussions with the U.S. military to ship its solid waste from planned live-fire training facilities from Tinian to Saipan. He emphasized a “need to line cell 3, because our cell 1 is about to expire.”

“In order to use cell 2…we’d hope we’d be able to line cell 3,” he said.

Cell 1 has a 13-year life, Rabauliman added, and the landfill’s other six cells are “relatively smaller than cell 1.

“Their lifespan will be obviously shorter,” he said.

Rabualiman acknowledged that the Marpi landfill “would be very congested in years to come. “…Given all the developments, given all the discussions with the military, the developments that you see on this chart do not include all the developments that are in the discussion phase.”

“And I assure you there are two huge ones we are in discussions with,” Rabauliman said, referring to plans he has heard of “an 8,000-unit dormitory.”

“The point being, there is going to be a lot of people here,” Rabauliman said, “and they will be generating a lot of solid waste.

“Unless we prepare to come up with a long term plan on what we are going to do to address solid waste. I fear that is one of those areas we are not going to be able to address.”

Palacios, who has complained that major siting permits have been “too general,” reiterated a call for local agencies to demand better information from developers before major siting permits are approved.

“I am kind of dismayed and a bit surprised that the matrix that has been provided to me” contains data, like solid waste for example, that is “not-specified” or “none stated.”

He strongly recommended that agencies require the environmental consultants of these permit applications to “specify this so that our agencies can quantify and plan for future impacts.”

“We cannot just let these permit applications slide,” Palacios said.

Best Sunshine, for example, needs 500 employees and there is going to be a lot of solid waste generation and traffic into that facility “that needs to be quantified,” he said.

And the former Hotel Nikko Saipan, the soon-to-be Kensington Hotel Saipan, will bear down some 300-some room and needs 291 employees.

“That’s 500 people at that facility on any given day,” Palacios said.

“[Enrique] Dela Cruz stated that Marpi landfill Cell #1 has to be closed. We are looking at a very substantial increase in solid waste generation by some of this development on top of what our existing demand is.”

Palacios called for that “we quantify” these details so that “so even this body will be aware that there are resources needed for expansion, for example, of solid waste, wastewater, traffic, roadways.”