Previous Story
Rota mayor to hire five to maintain Tatachog dump
Rota Mayor Efraim M. Atalig said his office is now working on having the island’s dumpsite properly managed with the hiring of five personnel who will ensure that it complies with environmental regulations.
At the same time, Atalig said they are shipping from Saipan to Rota heavy equipment—a bulldozer, backhoe, and dump truck—to maintain the dump.
“We are now making progress and managing how it should have been and [we] have a solid waste design to manage it better,” Atalig said in an interview yesterday at the Association of Mariana Islands’ Mayors, Vice Mayors and Elected Municipal Council Members special meeting at the Kanoa Resort.
Atalig also said the next step to addressing the dumpsite is to create a new landfill. He didn’t elaborate on how or when the landfill will be built but said it is one of the Rota Mayor’s Office’s priorities.
He said the new landfill might probably be in Tatachog where the dumpsite is currently located.
Atalig also noted that they had met with Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality officials to discuss the dumpsite violations that Rota and the Department of Public Work have to address. Responsibility for maintaining the dumpsite falls on the shoulders of the DPW’s Solid Waste Division.
BECQ said that citations still exist for the Rota dump due to it being an open dump, with neither roof nor segregation.
An environmental impact study was earlier commissioned to determine the viability of having a fully operational sanitary landfill on Rota. The then-Fitial administration allocated $1.6 million in Capital Improvement Project monies to build the project.
