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Saipan and Northern Islands local officials meet with Dentons
Dentons US LCC returned Monday morning to their San Francisco headquarters after nearly a week of intensive consultation on Saipan and Tinian on the military’s environmental impact statement.
Aldan
Monday’s meeting with Northern Islands Mayor Jerome K. Aldan and Saipan and Northern Islands Municipal Council chair Antonia M. Tudela and vice chair Alice S. Igitol touched on the mayor’s resettlement and redevelopment summit actions that have taken place since the 2012 frontier summit.
Dentons were provided briefing on the mayor’s participation in pre-scoping meeting (2013), socio-economic consultation (2014), ad-hoc meeting (2013), scoping meeting (2013), and the draft EIS (2015), all sponsored by the military, which to the mayor’s surprise found little (if any) reference in the latest draft EIS issued on April this year.
Tinian Mayor Joey San Nicolas briefly joined the group and expressed his sincere appreciation to Dentons for their diligence in reviewing the latest draft EIS and their assistance in that regard.
Tudela
Aldan lamented that interest in Pagan by the military planners became apparent following the successful 2012 frontier socio-economic development forum held on Saipan two years ago. In February the following year in 2013, the mayor was visited by military officials who expressed interest in Pagan for training. Little did the mayor realize then the military’s intent would soon be published in April that year.
On the April 13, 2013 Federal Register found in Volume 78, No. 78 on page 23920 the military issued a “notice of intent” on Pagan that “(t)he proposed action is to establish a series of live-fire and maneuver Ranges and Training Areas (RTAs) within the CNMI to meet within this purpose, (t)he expansion of existing RTAs and construction of new RTAs… for PACOM forces…to regularly train in the Mariana Islands. These RTAs will be available to U.S. forces and their allies on a continuous and uninterrupted schedule.”
For details on the events following the April 2013 notice of intent, visit the community website on http://www.savepaganisland.org.
