I beg to differ

I am responding to a letter in your Saturday edition, May 29, 2004, written by Mr. John S. Del Rosario, Jr. I feel that Mr. Del Rosario needs to rethink his facts a little. First, Environmental Impact Statements are not made until after a lease or permit is approved. Why would an investor spend tens of thousands of dollars or more (more likely 100’s of thousands for a Pagan mining project) on an EIS before they have approval to do the project? If you look at the hotels that were built on public land, each did the required EIS after they had the lease and not before.

Now what is the real purpose of the EIS? It is to help the government agencies, which do environmental regulation, and the developer to make an informed decision on how to proceed with a project with minimum damage to the environment. Almost all projects have a negative impact on the environment and the species that naturally occur there. The purpose of the EIC is to help minimize this impact.

Second, will you quit comparing the mining of Pagan with the mining of phosphate on Nauru. These are different islands with different geology and ecology. Nauru is a raised limestone island, while Pagan is a highly volcanic island. After a volcanic eruption, it can take a succession of hundreds to thousands of years for the climax community to return to the disrupted area. This is what is currently happening on the area around Pagan volcano. I have been to Pagan in 1993, and I know what the area they want to mine looks like. There are no forests there. So mining will not disrupt the natural forest, unlike on Nauru, because there are really none or very little in the area to be mined.

Now to your last question, how to guarantee restoration of Pagan and who will regulate it? This can be built into the contract with Azmar. The contact could be written in a way that would require Azmar to pay for monthly or quarterly inspections by a representative from Department of Lands and Natural Resources or Coastal Resource Management. Second they could be required to hire a full time employee, trained in restoration methods for mined areas, to grow the required plants on site and to manage the restoration. Finally, Azmar can be required to set up a trust fund that would be for the environmental restoration of Pagan. This fund could also help to pay for the inspections and the restoration export.

Finally, we in the CNMI need to look for other funding sources. The Pagan mining project is an excellent one. We the people of the CNMI risk little in developing it and have a chance to make large financial gains. It must be remembered that the textile industry will be closing soon because of the lifting of tariffs on textiles imported into the United States in the very near future. We need to seriously look for other sources of revenue and quit being anti-business!

Howard Cole
Tinian, Marpo Valley