\u201cMilitarization\u201d of the CNMI will affect the Commonwealth on several fronts, and one of those critical areas is its tourism industry.<\/p>\n
CNMI historian and former educator Samuel McPhetres said the Commonwealth is poised to have a boom in its tourism industry, with several hotels and resorts being developed.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many hotel rooms are there now on Saipan? How many rooms and how many tourists?\u201d McPhetres said.<\/p>\n
Based on recent numbers declared by developers that are actively seeking hotel constructions, the number of hotel rooms could swell to 10,000. There are also several, albeit smaller projects, all related to tourism, such as boutique hotels and high-end, 5-star class hotels. Best Sunshine International, Ltd. alone is projecting some 4,000 rooms.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd there are more hotels going up on the island,\u201d McPhetres said.<\/p>\n
He said all these hotels and resorts all have their \u201cpipelines\u201d of tourism-related chartered flights.<\/p>\n
And this is where the possible impact could happen, McPhetres said, noting that a military exercise will entail \u201cno fly zones\u201d once the exercises begin.<\/p>\n
These \u201cno fly zones\u201d will directly affect regular airlines plying the CNMI, as well as chartered flights.<\/p>\n
\u201cFlights on Saipan and Tinian might be handicapped,\u201d McPhetres said.<\/p>\n
The draft environmental impact statement on the military exercises specifies the airspace that the military will need once the exercises start.<\/p>\n
Credit to the military<\/strong><\/p>\n McPhetres added that it is right to give credit to the military, because all indications seem to point that the military is looking to \u201cminimize damage.\u201d<\/p>\n In the draft EIS, the military has suggested alternate routes that sea and air vessels can take.<\/p>\n \u201cGive them for setting up this committee. That is a good sign. They are willing to make an effort to minimize the damage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Predicting possible scenarios<\/strong><\/p>\n McPhetres earlier pointed out that the CNMI does not have local expertise to fully review a draft EIS on \u201clive fire\u201d exercises on Tinian and Pagan.<\/p>\n But aside from the lack of local expertise, McPhetres said he finds it difficult to predict a scenario\u2014if and when the military exercises happen\u2014because as of today, \u201cwe still do not know what the military is planning.\u201d<\/p>\n In the past few weeks, the U.S. military has gone around the CNMI to present a draft EIS to government officials, legislators, and businesses. A much-anticipated public hearing has also been set by the end of the month.<\/p>\n The draft EIS is seen as a prelude to the military\u2019s plans to fire live munitions on Tinian and drop \u201cinert\u201d bombs on Pagan\u2014which, as expected\u2014drew an uproar.<\/p>\n The government has been given 60 days to comment on the EIS, which was deemed too short a window, and requests have now been sent to the military to extend this deadline to six months.<\/p>\n The U.S. military said it is eyeing to give a decision on the request by the first or second week of May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cMilitarization\u201d of the CNMI will affect the Commonwealth on several fronts, and one of those…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1707,26,1503,200],"class_list":["post-200013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-best-sunshine-international","tag-cnmi","tag-eis","tag-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200013","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=200013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}