Pagan may not be a proposed \u201cbombing range\u201d for the U.S. military, as their head officials say\u2014just a proposed target for 1,000- to 2,000-lb \u201chighly-explosive aviation ordnance,\u201d according to environmental impact documents.<\/p>\n
A comparison of impact documents for training on Farallon De Medinilla or FDM\u2014a routine bombing area\u2014to that of Pagan reveal a proposed \u201cheavier load\u201d for an island that people fear may become another FDM.<\/p>\n
Training on Pagan, though, would occur less frequently than FDM, at a proposed 15 weeks per year.<\/p>\n
Impact documents for Pagan live-fire training describe 175 highly explosive 2,000-lb \u201caviation ordnance\u201d for Pagan per year.<\/p>\n
The documents also list an amount of 175 for highly explosive 1,000-lb and 500-lb aviation-delivered ordnance on Pagan.<\/p>\n
Impact documents also say that, for all \u201caction\u201d alternatives on Pagan, 500 highly-explosive 2.75-inch rockets will be used per year, and 150 high explosive 5-inch rockets will used, among hundreds and thousands of inert bomb and practice bullets, respectively, per year.<\/p>\n
On FDM, the military describes \u201cexplosive bombs\u201d to be less than 2,000 lbs. For \u201calternatives 1 and 2,\u201d they list the use of 6,242 bombs and 6,821 bombs, respectively, per year.<\/p>\n
These numbers are described in the final environmental impact statement for the Marianas Islands Training and Testing area, which also posits a \u201cno-action\u201d alternative option with 2,150 explosive bombs per year, or what is currently used.<\/p>\n
The final impact documents go on to describe tens and hundreds of explosive missiles, grenades, and mortar and thousands of medium-caliber and large-caliber projectiles for an island that will see ordnance use jump 450-percent if either military action alternative goes through.<\/p>\n
The MITT also describes under-sea and high-energy sonar training in the waters of the Marianas. Together with impact documents on live-fire training on Pagan and Tinian, the documents make clear the U.S. military\u2019s intent for training in the Marianas.<\/p>\n
Bombs on Pagan?<\/strong><\/p>\n This week, Marine Forces Pacific executive director Craig Whelden said it was a \u201cfalse characterization to liken the military\u2019s use of Pagan to Farallon de Mendenilla, Vieques, or Ko\u2019olawe\u201d\u2014or islands used by the military as bombing ranges.<\/p>\n But according to Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality administrator Frank Rabauliman in an interview yesterday, \u201cA bomb is a bomb is a bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUnless, I am misinterpreting what aviation [delivered] ordnance means, I think that there are going to be bombs in Pagan,\u201d Rabauliman said, referring to the munitions numbers listed in the military\u2019s environmental impact statements, or EIS.<\/p>\n On the military\u2019s environmental impact statements, or EIS, Rabauliman said, that an EIS should \u201cquantify the impact\u201d of all impacts to water, air, and noise quality, but said, \u201cThat was not made clear in the EIS\u201d for live-fire training.<\/p>\n He called these \u201ccumulative impacts\u201d a \u201chuge item to look at\u201d from an environmental standpoint, and said the military should quantify the impacts of both the Marianas Islands Training and Testing area, another set of proposed undersea, sonar, and bombing training with the live-fire training on Tinian and Pagan combined, over a period of time.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if they are required to add this cumulative impact, with that cumulative impact\u2014but it\u2019d be something very useful and very beneficial to the decision-makers and particularly for the members of the community\u2026So you know exactly what effect this federal activity is going to have, how it is going to effect the people but also the physical and cultural and socio-economic\u201d aspects of the CNMI, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pagan may not be a proposed \u201cbombing range\u201d for the U.S. military, as their head…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[1503,332,200,67],"class_list":["post-205199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-eis","tag-fdm","tag-military","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205199","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=205199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}