Environmental groups from the Northern Marianas Islands and nation-wide intend to challenge the Department of Navy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over an alleged failure to comply with Endangered Species Act and for ongoing live-fire and sea training in the Marianas Islands range, according to a notice of intent to sue these agencies dated Feb. 5.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Navy and the Service have violated and remain in ongoing violation of the ESA,\u201d said David Henkin, an Earthjustice attorney, in the letter. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf these violations of law are not cured within 60 days, [the groups] intend to file suit for declaratory and injunctive relief.\u201d<\/p>\n
Henkin\u2019s letter appears to pin the grounds of a lawsuit on the Navy\u2019s and Service\u2019s alleged failure to reconsider the expansive military project in light of newly declared and threatened species in the Marianas.<\/p>\n
The Navy fails \u201cto insure that their military project will not likely jeopardize the continued existence of newly listed threatened or endangered species,\u201d Henkin said.<\/p>\n
The argument appears to center on the Navy\u2019s continued and authorized training within the Marianas despite a lack of consultation with the wildlife service, after the Service\u2019s declared 23 plant and animal species as endangered or threatened last October.<\/p>\n
This consultation with the Service is required pursuant to the Endangered Species Act.<\/p>\n
Henkin quotes the Service\u2019s own words in their final rule on the matter: \u201cThe [Marianas Islands Training and Testing area] opens up every island within the Mariana Archipelago as a potential training site…which subsequently may result in negative impacts to any number of the 23 species addressed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Service said the proposed actions include increasing in \u201ctraining activities in Guam, Rota, Saipan, Tinian, Farallon de Medinilla (increase in bombing), and Pagan. Likely negative impacts include, but are not limited to, direct damage to individuals from live-fire training and ordnance, wildlife resulting from life-fire and ordnance, direct physical damage (e.g. trampling by humans, helicopter landing, etc.) to individuals, and spread of nonnative species.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAdditionally, water purification training is proposed for all these islands, exept for Farallon de Medinilla, which may be particularly damaging to the Rota blue damselfly,\u201d the Service said.<\/p>\n
The Service\u2019s final decision, Henkin said, \u201cmakes clear\u201d that the Navy training may affect the newly listed species, \u201ctriggering the obligation to reinitiate consultation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis notice letter was prepared in good faith, after reasonably diligent investigation,\u201d Henkin said. \u201cIf you believe that any of the foregoing is factually inaccurate or erroneous, please notify us promptly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Comments from the Department of Navy were not available as of press time, but a Navy spokesperson said a statement would be forthcoming today.<\/p>\n
Large picture frustrations<\/strong><\/p>\n The potential lawsuit taps into larger frustrations over military projects\u2014like firing ranges, a divert airfield, the proposed leasing of the entire island of Pagan, and the relocation of thousands of Marines to Guam from Japan\u2014that military planners have issued and approved within the Marianas Islands range in recent years.<\/p>\n \u201cLook at what is happening here,\u201d Peter J. Perez, co-founder of the advocate group Pagan Watch, said yesterday. \u201cA department of the federal government, not the leadership of the United States, not the President and the Congress, but a department, somehow has the right to unilaterally decide to turn a state\u2019s territory into the world\u2019s largest live-fire training range.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a severe encroachment on the territory of Guam and the CNMI,\u201d Perez said. Pagan Watch is one of the handful groups attached to the notice to sue the Navy.<\/p>\n For the Marianas Islands Training and Testing area, or MITT, the Navy expanded a training area encompassing some 500,000 square nautical miles of ocean into an expansive 980,000-some square miles\u2014an area that advocates have lamented is larger than the states of Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Montana, and New Mexico combined.<\/p>\n In 2013, the late CNMI governor Eloy Songao Inos called on the Navy to conduct better baseline studies, grant more marine protection areas, and asked that undersea training not be done around certain island seamounts believed to be plentiful with marine life. <\/p>\n But in their formal response to Inos last May, the Navy said they could not impose these \u201cgeographic limitations on training and testing activities,\u201d calling it an \u201cimpractical burden\u201d to implement and an \u201cunacceptable impact to the effectiveness\u201d of their training.<\/p>\n The Navy approved the undersea ordnance training\u2014inclusive of a reported roughly 300-percent increase of ordnance bombing on Farallon De Medinilla\u2014last August.<\/p>\n Perez said the voices of the CNMI governor, the Senate and the House of Representatives, the mayors, the municipal council, or in other words, the entire local state-level government are all being \u201cignored.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThe American citizens who live here\u2014who have said \u201cNO\u201d in a strong and clear voice\u2014are also being disregarded.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn fact, the only obstacle to the Department of Defense\u2019s intention to take and bomb our islands and waters is the requirement under federal law that they follow the EIS process that was designed to ensure compliance with federal laws for the protection of the environment and historic assets.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPagan Watch and the other signatories to the letter are determined to not allow the DoD to ignore the EIS process as well. It is all that is standing between us and what the late governor Inos characterized as the \u201cexistential threat\u201d of the DoD turning our lands and waters into a giant live-fire range with all the destruction, contamination, and restrictions on the people\u2019s freedoms that come with it,\u201d Perez told Saipan Tribune yesterday.<\/p>\n The February notice of intent to sue lists a total of eight groups from the CNMI, Guam, and Hawaii in the notice to sue.<\/p>\n The attached groups include the Alternative Zero Coalition, Center for Biological Diversity, Fanacho Marianas, Guardians of Gani, Oceania Resistance, Pagan Watch, Tinian Premier Football Club, and Tinian Women\u2019s Association.<\/p>\n The letter was sent to the Department of Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, USFW Service Director Daniel M. Ashe, and Department of Interior Secretary Sally Jewel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Environmental groups from the Northern Marianas Islands and nation-wide intend to challenge the Department of…<\/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":[26,51,200,9630],"class_list":["post-220583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-cnmi","tag-guam","tag-military","tag-pagan-watch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220583","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=220583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}