A local U.S. Army infantryman is admittedly conflicted with the proposed military buildup in the CNMI, but from experience says that proposed high-impact live firing ranges would be safe.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we fired\u2026the national Hawaiian geese was on those ranges. Whenever we saw the bird within a one-mile radius, the range goes cold. We shut down,\u201d said Edward Dela Cruz, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow fast is it going to be? It\u2019ll take three seconds,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ranges are highly safe,\u201d he added. \u201c\u2026We have designated targets so soldiers will not miss. If they miss, we fail our jobs as officers.\u201d<\/p>\n
From speaking with his peers, he said most of them are \u201cpro-military.\u201d \u201cThey just don\u2019t want to speak out right now because the crowds are really aggressive. If they came out here to talk about their service, they\u2019d say [the firing ranges] are necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n
But as one who studied natural resource management in college, Dela Cruz conceded that \u201con the environmental side\u201d the military could do much better, particularly on Pagan.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow much freedom of access will they be given out there? The minute we give the military any ground\u2014once they take those areas\u2014they have every right to restrict people off it.\u201d<\/p>\n
But in the event the military does back off from using Pagan, he said the CNMI people and Northern Mariana Island descents \u201cbetter damn see something happen\u201d with the island\u2019s development.<\/p>\n
He was referring to Senate Bill 19-29, which aims to bring agencies together to set off the process of resettling Pagan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been harping that Pagan can be used for decades. Why just now? There\u2019s been a lot of talks about how we can use Pagan as geothermal renewable energy source, or use it for ecotourism\u2014and it takes a military buildup to wake up their eyes to finally build something?\u201d<\/p>\n
Dela Cruz challenged lawmakers to continue with this effort regardless if military buildup happens or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A local U.S. Army infantryman is admittedly conflicted with the proposed military buildup in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900,4],"tags":[26,4305,200,190],"class_list":["post-200734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-edward-dela-cruz","tag-military","tag-natural"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200734","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=200734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}