Sugar Dock rehabilitation eyed

Rehabilitating the Sugar Dock would take a lot of work but House Speaker Rafael S. Demapan (R-Saipan) and Saipan and Northern Islands Legislative Delegation chair Rep. John Paul Sablan (R-Saipan) are leading the efforts to make the facility safe again for the community.

Cracks have worsened at the once Saipan seaport, with some portions now crumbling, making it a safety hazard for tourists that swim and visit the place, which is also a popular attraction because of its clean water.

Sablan said they held a meeting last week where he and Demapan talked with representatives of the Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality, Coastal Resources Management, the Division of Environmental Quality, and other agencies that could help the project.

“What we did is gathered all agencies that have policy interest with the Sugar Dock so that we could rehabilitate and fix what’s broken in the area,” said Sablan, who added they would invite the Department of Public Safety and the Department of Public Works to attend the next meeting.

He said Sugar Dock used to be under the Commonwealth Ports Authority since it was one of the island’s ports of entry. The CPA transferred its control to the Department of Public Lands in 2016.

“Now, DPL is most likely the lead department on this. We appropriated a little over $100,000 funding to help in rehabilitating Sugar Dock,” said Sablan who, along with Demapan, are Precinct 2 representatives.

“We don’t know how much is the total cost of rehabilitating Sugar Dock, but the Speaker and I intend to keep on appropriating funds to fix it. Every time we have an opportunity, we will always try to find funding sources,” he added.

Sablan said the first meeting was just to discuss how to go about rehabilitating Sugar Dock. “We just want to know what they are going to do and asked them to look at their policies and regulations.”

“We just want to gather all of it and if we are going to rehab the port, it will require dredging. BECQ and CRM have policies, and an environmental assessment also needs to be done. We’re going to have a series of meetings to address the issue,” Sablan added.

He said the Sugar Dock’s current state has also made it a safety issue. “We don’t want our citizens, residents, and other people to go there and have an accident. There are barricades and signs but people tend to ignore it. We are not going to wait for an accident to happen.”

Sablan said several children and other people use the dock as a diving platform and they want to warn them that what they are doing is dangerous. “Right now it is very dangerous but we’re moving forward and we’re going to have more meetings.”