{"id":200958,"date":"2015-05-07T04:00:50","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T18:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=200958"},"modified":"2015-05-07T04:00:50","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T18:00:50","slug":"chamber-to-reposition-view-on-military-use-of-nmi-lands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/chamber-to-reposition-view-on-military-use-of-nmi-lands\/","title":{"rendered":"Chamber to reposition view on military use of NMI lands"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Saipan Chamber of Commerce is repositioning its view on the U.S. military\u2019s plans for the CNMI, specifically regarding the use of land on Tinian and Pagan.<\/p>\n

\"Sablan\"<\/a>
Sablan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At their monthly general meeting yesterday at the Saipan World Resort, Chamber president Alex Sablan said their original statement will change dramatically following recent developments surrounding the issue as well as public hearings and the community\u2019s position.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still preparing our written position as a Chamber,\u201d said Sablan. \u201cWhile we haven\u2019t come up with a formal statement, I think the statement will change dramatically from the original.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2013, the Chamber board took the position that they \u201cdo not oppose the military use of the Northern Islands, as long as said use does not interfere with the development of private business in the islands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sablan said in the Chamber\u2019s newsletter that the board\u2019s original position was \u201ctoo simplistic.\u201d At the time, they did not have the facts relating to the CNMI Joint Military Training Environmental Impact Statement document, which was just released in April.<\/p>\n

But now, changes will be made as \u201cthe CJMT is taking a different course.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve come a long way and a far departure from what the original proposal was and so we\u2019re going to have to take a good sound look,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Chamber will be hiring consultants to help them through the process and review what the military really wants to do on the islands.<\/p>\n

According to Sablan, the overall impact of the training seems to be more extreme than what was originally proposed to the Chamber almost two years ago.<\/p>\n

He added that earlier discussion of military live fire training wasn\u2019t given emphasis as it is being given now. Urban assault training and setting up \u201cwarm areas\u201d for military use was what was mostly discussed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea of relocating Pagan residents, putting infrastructures, sharing the island in joint training atmosphere seem like a reasonable approach to selling the idea of training on Pagan.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut as it states now, looks like they need the entire Pagan island, there will be no joint use from their perspective, and that doesn\u2019t fall in line with the business opportunities and equal tourism and placing Pagan residents back up there,\u201d he said. (Frauleine S. Villanueva)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Saipan Chamber of Commerce is repositioning its view on the U.S. military\u2019s plans for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":200962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[56,3539,26,200],"class_list":["post-200958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-business-3","tag-cjmt","tag-cnmi","tag-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200958","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\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}