Environmental Week to highlight public’s role

The Division of Environmental Quality will hold its 22nd Environmental Awareness Week on April 17 to 23 as part of continuing efforts to expand environmental awareness in the CNMI community.

Committee chair Juliana Dela Rosa said the yearly event aims to bring awareness to everyone—the government sector, private businesses and the entire community—that they could help protect and preserve the environment.

She said the committee has come up with 11 activities for the week, including an Environmental Expo, Islandwide Cleanup, Lagoon and Scuba Dive Cleanup and the annual National Earth Day celebration.

The event’s theme for this year is “Our environment, our health, our future.”

Dela Rosa said that taking care of the environment must be everyone’s concern. She said sometimes the community takes the environment for granted but, in the end, everyone is affected whenever something is done that produces an imbalance in the environment. “When we protect our environment, it protects our health,” she stressed.

Dela Rosa said she is happy with the turnout of participants who registered for this year’s celebration. She said there will be more participants this year, and not just students.

But she said getting the students involved as early as now is a step in building good character and attitude toward the environment, so when they grow older they would be more careful and concerned with it.

Cleanup Marianas Day is an islandwide cleanup on April 23. The cleanup will start at 7am on all nine major highways around the island. The Lagoon Cleanup will be on April 21, while the Scuba Dive Cleanup will be on April 22. The scuba cleanup would focus on all dive sites, to include the docks along the Civic Center in Susupe.

Dela Rosa said littering is now a major problem on Saipan and, through these activities, they would be able to inform the public the ill effects of littering on the island.

The proclamation signing for the week-long celebration would be on April 13 at the DEQ office. The environmental expo would be on April 21 at the Carolinian Utt and on April 21 at the Street Market. Right now the Environmental Quality office is conducting DEQ Lab Tours, which started since February.

For more information on the Environmental Awareness Week, contact the DEQ office at 664-8500 or 664-8501.