![\"Department](\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/DOD-pix.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cI think we have looked at a good range of things,\u201d Scher said on Thursday. \u201cBut I fully expect that other people will come forward now that the draft is out there with other alternatives. And that is the point of the process in the end, that\u2019s why we do this, that\u2019s why this isn\u2019t final, that\u2019s why we already had ad-hoc meetings and why we\u2019ll continue to have them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expect there will be alternatives,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Scher was responding to questions from Saipan Tribune on whether he believed the military has considered a broad enough of training alternatives for their proposed live-fire and bombing, as well as alternatives with lesser impact as suggested by the CNMI government and people.<\/p>\n
He was also directed to Guam, where in 2010, groups had sued the Department of Defense over the military selection of Pagat, an ancient Chamorro village and burial ground, as the site for a firing range complex.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit, from the Guam Historic Preservation Trust, We Are Guahan, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said that the Navy was non-compliant with NEPA by failing to adequately consider alternative locations for live-fire complexes that would have less of an impact on the environment and historic sites.<\/p>\n
While the Defense Department controlled approximately one-third of Guam, they failed to consider a single alternative for building their fire ranges on existing military property, the groups said.<\/p>\n
In 2011\u2014in what was called a victory by these groups, the Navy filed a declaration in federal court to order another supplemental review of proposed sites\u2014essentially restarting the NEPA process over again.<\/p>\n
Speaking toward the situation on Guam, Scher said, they \u201cwere able to come up with a compromise solution where both the people on the island and the U.S. military feel like we have a good solution for pursuing what all of us want.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at the history of Guam, there were certain things we never thought about doing and they worked for everybody involved. I have every hope and expectation that we will get there for the CNMI.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perez and Alternative Zero, though, do not believe the military has laid out an adequate range of alternatives or even a true \u201cno-action\u201d alternative for the CNMI people to comprehend and respond to.<\/p>\n
Similarly, Marc Fink, senior attorney of the Center of Biological Diversity, told Saipan Tribune last month that the CNMI Joint Military Training draft environmental impact statement \u201cfails to consider alternatives in other regions.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also think the Navy has violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to consider the combined environmental impacts of these two [CJMT and Marianas Islands Training and Testing] proposals within the same EIS. Similar proposals in the same region at the same time must be considered together, in a single EIS,\u201d Fink said then.<\/p>\n
Perez, on Thursday, said any alternatives that consider other places would obviously result in lesser impact to the CNMI.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they don\u2019t provide any, how can you possibly respond? It is very incomplete,\u201d he said of the military\u2019s proposals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we certainly feel that the EIS in the military\u2019s presentation is inappropriately narrow and unfairly so,\u201d said Perez.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. Department of Defense Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans and Capabilities Robert M….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":204705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[26,1503,200,67],"class_list":["post-204703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-cnmi","tag-eis","tag-military","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204703","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=204703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}