The Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality is looking into the Japanese underground tunnel found at the Commonwealth Utilities Corp.\u2019s power plant on Rota.<\/p>\n
According to BECQ Administrator Frank Rabauliman, they are assessing the tunnel, noting that it is \u201cvery close\u201d to CUC\u2019s fuel tank.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously it\u2019s very close to an AST, above storage tank for CUC,\u201d Rabauliman said.<\/p>\n
However, they are not yet sure whether or not the AST is directly above a portion of the tunnel which was earlier described by CUC acting manager Gary Camacho as an \u201celaborate\u201d tunnel that goes in different directions, looking like \u201csomething from the war era\u201d and has cemented walls and floors. <\/p>\n
CUC earlier said that their transformer and oil storage facility is directly above a portion of tunnel. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re surveying it whether it runs under the AST. We\u2019re hoping that it doesn\u2019t,\u201d Rabauliman said. <\/p>\n
He added that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region IX office was already informed of the tunnel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are aware of that tunnel,\u201d Rabauliman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re making sure that, and we\u2019re working with EPA on this, to make sure that the integrity of that tank is not compromised with the newly discovered tunnel,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
According to CUC, the underground Japanese tunnel was accidentally discovered on Rota by their contractor earlier this year. <\/p>\n
The contractor was working on a certain area near the power plant when that area caved in.<\/p>\n
Water and oil were found inside the tunnel although it is not yet clear where they came from and how long the sludge has been there. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality is looking into the Japanese underground tunnel found…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10830,49,64,50],"class_list":["post-225023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-ast","tag-cuc","tag-oil","tag-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225023","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\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225023\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}