Despite of the U.S. military\u2019s interest in Pagan for training purposes, Northern Islands mayor-elect Jerome Aldan wants to have residents visiting the island more frequently than is the case now.<\/p>\n
To usher in his new administration, Aldan confirmed that a priority of his would be to focus on developing agricultural homesteads there.<\/p>\n
This would enable residents to return to their islands and cultivate land for subsistence living, according to Aldan, adding that this would be his \u201ctop priority.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another priority is to activate the Pagan fishing community in conjunction with the Department of Land and Natural Resources. Another, pursuant to CNMI Public Law 16-18, is to identify areas for free trade zones in the Northern Islands.<\/p>\n
That law allows 30 hectares of any island in the Northern Islands to be established as free trade zones to \u201cstimulate and facilitate economic growth and development.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.S. military has been looking at the Mariana Islands\u2014namely Guam, Tinian, and Pagan\u2014for training purposes as it looks to rebalance its forces across the Pacific.<\/p>\n
The CNMI Joint Military Training draft environment impact statement for Tinian and Pagan is to be published in February, a month after Aldan is sworn in.<\/p>\n
Larger scale combined live fire, and combined arms amphibious assault have been described as the proposed training for Pagan, according to the Marine Corp Forces Pacific.<\/p>\n
This training will be covered under the EIS. Public meetings on the DEIS is scheduled for March, with public comment period closing in April.<\/p>\n
The final EIS is scheduled for February 2016. A record of decision is expected in April 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite of the U.S. military\u2019s interest in Pagan for training purposes, Northern Islands mayor-elect Jerome…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[51,200,541],"class_list":["post-184556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-guam","tag-military","tag-northern-islands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}