Joint briefing in CNMI, Calif. on lawsuit vs CUC

The U.S. Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency yesterday held a joint press briefing on Saipan and in San Francisco through a video teleconference where they discussed the lawsuit against the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.

On Saipan, present at the U.S. Attorney’s Office at the Horiguchi Building in Garapan were U.S. Attorney for the CNMI Leonardo M. Rapadas, Assistant U.S. Attorney civil chief Mikel W. Schwab, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Benedetto, and EPA Emergency Response Office’s Michelle Rogow.

In San Francisco, participants in the briefing included Environmental & Natural Resources Division’s Environmental Enforcement Section senior attorney Bradley R. O’Brien, EPA Office of Regional Counsel attorneys Marcela Von Vacano and Janet Magnuson, EPA Pacific Islands Office manager John McCarroll, Pacific Islands Office environmental engineers Mike Lee and Barry Pollock, Department of Justice paralegal Doraine Gonzales, and DOJ summer employee Mat Hanjom.

The teleconference was intended to announce the filing of lawsuit against CUC before the U.S. District Court for the NMI, alleging various violations of the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act.

“At the same time, we also filed two stipulated orders where the government and CUC agree to certain things: One is in relation to water and sewage system at CUC and the other deals with oil storage [and] power system,” Rapadas said.

He emphasized that they are not filing the lawsuit to punish anyone or to get money from the CNMI or CUC.

“What we are looking for is a long-term goal, a long-term purpose of making sure that the drinking water is safe, that the water that you’re swimming in is also safe,” he said.

Rapadas said the people in San Francisco who are in the video teleconference have been with the U.S. Attorney from the very beginning to go over the situation and help them come up with solutions with CUC.

“For this situation, EPA has been the one that has been working with us, with CUC and the CNMI government,” he said.

Rapadas said the CUC violations were not anything new, with CUC already having had a history of receiving EPA administrative orders.

“This is not something that just kind of popped up. It’s something that has been going on for a while. And we hope to rectify it from this point on with the stipulated orders,” Rapadas explained.

Schwab said they have been involved in trying to resolve these violations through the EPA administrative processes but that it has now come to a lawsuit.

McCarroll characterizes the filing of the lawsuits as a milestone for improvement of water and wastewater services in the CNMI.

McCarroll said the lawsuit and stipulated orders mark the completion of negotiations and settlements that have been signed by both the CNMI government and the U.S. government to make these improvements.

“As the U.S. Attorney said, the intent is not to punish CUC. We are not issuing any fines. I think what we are doing today in this whole action is about creating a halfway point to bring CUC, its drinking water, wastewater and oil storage system in compliance,” he said. “It is about protecting CNMI’s residents and environments.”

Rapadas said what they are doing today is not providing a band-aid to the problem.

“We want to make sure that the whole patient is cured,” he said.

Rogow said the third part of the action relates to CUC’s oil storage transfer and delivery system. Rogow said it involves the power plants facilities on both Saipan and Tinian.

“This specifically aims at getting CUC into compliance with oil spill prevention, preparedness and response regulations. It covers not only things like the drum storage, the excess of the amount of used oil drums at the power plant here, but also the infrastructure…and the pipeline which transfers oil into the main power plant,” she said.

Rogow said the order in the agreement is designed to make CUC focus on maintaining a better oil storage and delivery system, providing oil spill prevention measures, ensuring that their tanks and pipelines are safe.