For Department of Land and Natural Resources Secretary Richard Seman, the danger of having to review a draft environmental impact statement on proposed military activities on the CNMI is that of missing \u201csomething critical.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seman said he fully supports the call for a six-month extension of the draft EIS review because \u201cwe do not want to miss anything that is critical.\u201d<\/p>\n
From a scientific point of view, Seman said that reading the more-than-1,000-page draft report is just the start.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat will take time is the research part on what the document is saying,\u201d Seman said.<\/p>\n
He noted that from his own initial review, there are a lot of provisions in the draft EIS on endangered species and questions on environmental impacts.<\/p>\n
The official said \u201cthis is such a big issue\u201d and that residents and officials \u201cmust use science\u201d and \u201cnot emotions\u201d in reviewing the document.<\/p>\n
He likened the need for more research to a courtroom rebuttal, where scientific facts and supporting research should be heard and considered.<\/p>\n
The draft EIS has been described as \u201ctoo technical\u201d<\/p>\n
The Inos administration requested for the review extension, followed by lawmakers.<\/p>\n
Funds have also been made available, because the EIS review will require experts outside the CNMI.<\/p>\n
Another funding is being eyed specifically for Pagan, which is under the jurisdiction of the Northern Islands. A $75,000 funding to study the draft EIS, particularly on Pagan, is being worked on.<\/p>\n
Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) earlier said the Department of the Interior has announced a technical assistance grant of $250,000 to the Office of the Governor to hire environmental experts to review the draft EIS.<\/p>\n
Sablan said the funds are appropriated by Congress and allows the department to respond to \u201ccritical needs in the insular areas for which local funds are not available.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For Department of Land and Natural Resources Secretary Richard Seman, the danger of having to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,346,1503,541],"class_list":["post-199547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-dlnr","tag-eis","tag-northern-islands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199547","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\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}