{"id":223320,"date":"2016-03-17T06:06:24","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T20:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=223320"},"modified":"2016-03-17T06:06:24","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T20:06:24","slug":"landfill-cells-maxed-little-5-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/landfill-cells-maxed-little-5-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Landfill cells maxed out \u2018in a little over 5 years\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Department<\/a>
Department heads answer questions on infrastructure demands during a Senate hearing yesterday. From left, Department of Public Works Secretary James Ada, Division of Coastal Resources Management director Fran Castro, Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality Administrator Frank Rabauliman, and Environmental Quality director Ray Masga (Partly hidden). (Dennis B. Chan)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If construction paces as planned, environmental and public works officials expressed fears yesterday that the CNMI would not be able to handle the amount of solid waste generated by existing and new developers that, by their count, would max out several Saipan landfill cells in a little over five years and bring the hotel room count well-over 8,000 rooms.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I were to pinpoint one infrastructure that we, in my personal opinion, may not be able to address\u2014that\u2019s solid waste,\u201d said Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality Administrator Frank Rabauliman during a nearly three-hour hearing with the Senate Committee on Resources, Economic Developments, and Programs yesterday morning.<\/p>\n

Led by Sen. Arnold Palacios (R-Saipan), the senators wanted to know how major development would impact solid waste capacity, among others, and how the government could plan for this. <\/p>\n

Best Sunshine International, Ltd.\u2019s Grand Marianas Casino resort and Honest Profit\u2019s Saipan Resort Hotel on Saipan, among several others in the CNMI, lead a pack of developers with approved major siting permits who construction plans add another 4,400 hotels, and their resulting human traffic and solid waste demands. <\/p>\n

According to developer chart from BECQ this month, developers eye completion dates as early as this year and 2019 and will bring the hotel room count to 8,271 room and require 10,628 employees. The existing hotel room count stands at 3,547.<\/p>\n

Responding to a series of questions from Sen. Justo Quitugua (Ind-Saipan), Enrigue Dela Cruz, solid waste director of the Department of Public Works, disclosed that filling of \u201ccell 1 and 2\u201d at the Marpi landfill would \u201ctake us about to a little over five years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we are going to fill up\u201d the cells in five years, Quitugua responded, \u201cthat\u2019s short, that\u2019s tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last November, BECQ reported that that enormous amount of trash and debris collected in the aftermath of last year\u2019s Typhoon Soudelor had \u201csignificantly shorted\u201d the lifespan of the landfill\u2019s cell number 1.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, Rabauliman also pointed to discussions with the U.S. military to ship its solid waste from planned live-fire training facilities from Tinian to Saipan. He emphasized a \u201cneed to line cell 3, because our cell 1 is about to expire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order to use cell 2\u2026we\u2019d hope we\u2019d be able to line cell 3,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Cell 1 has a 13-year life, Rabauliman added, and the landfill\u2019s other six cells are \u201crelatively smaller than cell 1. <\/p>\n

\u201cTheir lifespan will be obviously shorter,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rabualiman acknowledged that the Marpi landfill \u201cwould be very congested in years to come. \u201c\u2026Given all the developments, given all the discussions with the military, the developments that you see on this chart do not include all the developments that are in the discussion phase.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I assure you there are two huge ones we are in discussions with,\u201d Rabauliman said, referring to plans he has heard of \u201can 8,000-unit dormitory.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe point being, there is going to be a lot of people here,\u201d Rabauliman said, \u201cand they will be generating a lot of solid waste.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless we prepare to come up with a long term plan on what we are going to do to address solid waste. I fear that is one of those areas we are not going to be able to address.\u201d<\/p>\n

Palacios, who has complained that major siting permits have been \u201ctoo general,\u201d reiterated a call for local agencies to demand better information from developers before major siting permits are approved.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am kind of dismayed and a bit surprised that the matrix that has been provided to me\u201d contains data, like solid waste for example, that is \u201cnot-specified\u201d or \u201cnone stated.\u201d<\/p>\n

He strongly recommended that agencies require the environmental consultants of these permit applications to \u201cspecify this so that our agencies can quantify and plan for future impacts.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot just let these permit applications slide,\u201d Palacios said.<\/p>\n

Best Sunshine, for example, needs 500 employees and there is going to be a lot of solid waste generation and traffic into that facility \u201cthat needs to be quantified,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And the former Hotel Nikko Saipan, the soon-to-be Kensington Hotel Saipan, will bear down some 300-some room and needs 291 employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s 500 people at that facility on any given day,\u201d Palacios said.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Enrique] Dela Cruz stated that Marpi landfill Cell #1 has to be closed. We are looking at a very substantial increase in solid waste generation by some of this development on top of what our existing demand is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Palacios called for that \u201cwe quantify\u201d these details so that \u201cso even this body will be aware that there are resources needed for expansion, for example, of solid waste, wastewater, traffic, roadways.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If construction paces as planned, environmental and public works officials expressed fears yesterday that the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":223332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[880,1707,10359,200],"class_list":["post-223320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-becq","tag-best-sunshine-international","tag-enrigue-dela-cruz","tag-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223320","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=223320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}