{"id":205478,"date":"2015-06-30T06:06:21","date_gmt":"2015-06-29T20:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=205478"},"modified":"2015-06-30T06:06:21","modified_gmt":"2015-06-29T20:06:21","slug":"lawmakers-pin-hopes-on-dentons-to-understand-draft-eis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/lawmakers-pin-hopes-on-dentons-to-understand-draft-eis\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawmakers pin hopes on Dentons to understand draft EIS"},"content":{"rendered":"

CNMI legislators are pinning their hopes on a third-party consultant to finally provide a clearer understanding of the U.S. military\u2019s draft environment impact statement on joint exercises and live-fire activities in the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n

The lawmakers met with representatives of Dentons and its partner Environmental Science Associates yesterday on Capital Hill to discuss the initial findings of the consultancy firm.<\/p>\n

Nicholas Yost, a partner at Dentons US LLC, told lawmakers that the firm\u2019s role is to \u201ccritique\u201d the draft EIS and \u201cadvise\u201d the CNMI government.
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\"From<\/a>
From left, Matthew Adams, partner at consulting firm of Dentons; Jim Keany, biological director of ESA; and Nicholas Yost, also of Dentons; met with lawmakers yesterday on Capital Hill to discuss their initial findings on the U.S. military\u2019s draft environmental impact statement on proposed \u201clive-fire\u201d activities. (Joel D. Pinaroc)
<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Matthew Adams, who is also a partner are Dentons, said the initial findings clearly indicate an \u201cinadequate\u201d draft EIS.<\/p>\n

Adams also said one of the fundamental flaws of the EIS documents is that it presented a \u201cnarrow\u201d set of alternatives.<\/p>\n

Jim Keany, biological director and senior program manager at ESA, added that the draft EIS did not present a \u201ccumulative impact\u201d analysis and that it only looked at separate elements.<\/p>\n

Rep. Angel A. Demapan (R-Saipan), who chairs the House Committee on Federal and Foreign Affairs, said the initial findings presented were \u201calarming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are pinning our hopes on Dentons to provide us a clearer understanding of these documents,\u201d Demapan said, adding that he, like most of his colleagues, is excited to see the report that Dentons will provide.<\/p>\n

Rep. Vinson Sablan (Ind-Saipan) said he is glad that Dentons is on board for lawmakers \u201cto see important information\u201d that were not presented before.<\/p>\n

For Rep. Joseph \u201cLee Pan\u201d Guerrero (R-Saipan), the draft EIS was full of \u201cmilitary jargon\u201d and that he hopes Dentons will provide a report that will make it easier for the CNMI to understand certain content of the ESI particularly the National Environmental Policy Act process.<\/p>\n

Rep. Blas Jonathan \u201cB.J\u201d Attao (Ind-Saipan), echoed the other lawmakers sentiments, saying that he hopes Dentons can \u201ctranslate\u201d the draft EIS to help the public understand it more clearly.<\/p>\n

Dentons and ESA are currently working with other CNMI departments to conduct a series of public hearings on July 15, 16, and 17. The hearings are meant to generate more public comments on the draft EIS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CNMI legislators are pinning their hopes on a third-party consultant to finally provide a clearer…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":205489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[26,1503,1585,200],"class_list":["post-205478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-cnmi","tag-eis","tag-esa","tag-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205478","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=205478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}