A plea to stop messing up the island

Last weekend I took a ride around the island and tried to look at things through the eyes of a tourist. Heading out to Marpi, everything looked great from the Nikko northward. The road shoulders were nicely mowed, there was virtually no trash, and even the “life prolonging vitamin supplement” billboards at the Last Command Post have been removed. Whoever is maintaining this area is doing a good job. Also, the facilities at the Grotto are almost done and look nice, and will allow many more people to see the Grotto who might not otherwise be able to do so because of physical impairments or other reasons. Hopefully the idiots amongst us won’t vandalize it.

Going back to Garapan and heading south, things didn’t look too bad, if one overlooks the generally horrendous architecture and lack of planning. Beach Road, at least, on the ocean side, is beautiful all the way to Susupe. Unfortunately, that was the end of the good news. Just about everywhere else on the island is a mess. I read recently that there are an estimated 15,000 junk cars around the island, and I believe it. They are everywhere. The Saipan mayor was recently quoted as saying that fines of $50 per day can be imposed on landowners or lessees who fail to remove scrap metal from their properties. Has a fine for such an offense ever been levied? Even just once? Assuming that the 15,000 figure is correct, that’s a potential $750,000 per day! The projected $50,000,000 deficit this year could be paid off in a little over two months if somebody decided to enforce the law. Besides mining pozzolan, we should also be mining junk cars.

I also took a ride to Lake Susupe. This could be one of the prettiest places on the island, if you didn’t have to pass through a garbage dump to get there. The MOVER organization was in the midst of a major cleanup effort along the road. Their efforts should be appreciated by everyone, but wouldn’t it be much better if they could spend their time on planting trees and flowers, rather than picking up after slobs?

The efforts of the Mayor’s Office, MOVER, and other civic organizations will probably be needed to some extent forever. But we need to start finding ways to stop messing up our island in the first place.

Herminia Matsumoto Fusco
Capitol Hill