The administration of Gov. Ralph DLG Torres has finalized its version of a programmatic agreement for a proposed U.S. Air Force divert airfield on Tinian, drafting language that essentially forces parties to re-negotiate terms, if the military chose to site the airfield on another CNMI location over the preferred \u201cTinian-only\u201d site.<\/p>\n
Programmatic agreements are essentially measures agreed to by consulting parties to protect cultural and historic properties affected by Department of Defense projects.<\/p>\n
The CNMI\u2019s draft version was sent over to PACOM\u2019s Lt. Gen. Anthony Crutchfield on Monday, the single point of contact for the CNMI on Defense projects, and is the version that the CNMI is willing to sign on to, Torres officials said yesterday.<\/p>\n
Torres said yesterday that they emphasized, \u201cthat it\u2019s only Tinian\u201d and that if there were any other proposal again, on another site in the CNMI, that \u201cthey have to come back and review it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s specifically Tinian,\u201d said Torres told Saipan Tribune in an interview between meetings at his office on Capitol Hill yesterday afternoon. \u201cAnd if there is any other option then we have to come back to the drawing board.\u201d<\/p>\n
CNMI officials have insisted, among other concerns, that the divert airfield be placed on Tinian, despite the military\u2019s previously heavily advertised \u201chybrid\u201d option which would spread divert project on both Saipan and Tinian to lessen project impact.<\/p>\n
Torres said yesterday municipal mayors also want to see the buildup on Tinian, and that he looks forward to working with Crutchfield on making this a reality.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am optimistic about it. I feel that both sides have worked in good faith. At least I know we have worked in good faith. The ultimate goal is\u2026to see the divert airfield be in Tinian.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Torres administration also aims to have Torres be one of the main signatories on the document.<\/p>\n
Officials explain that there are three signatories to the document, signatories, invited signatories, and consulting party signatories.<\/p>\n
Torres wants to be a signatory, or an invited signatory given the same purviews as main signatory to the document, to have say and consent over any amendments that the military may propose to the document.<\/p>\n
The Torres administration also has included language to have the Air Force show they have a lease or are in the process of getting a lease from the Commonwealth Ports Authority for the divert project on Tinian.<\/p>\n
Torres said these were one the \u201cchanges\u201d they put into the agreement so that the military \u201chave some sort of draft proposal that CPA agrees on.\u201d<\/p>\n
This includes a master plan, or airport layout plan, that CPA and the military must agree on.<\/p>\n
Torres told Saipan Tribune their programmatic agreement will be \u201crequiring\u201d these.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other one was that we have to be part of the signatories\u201d on \u201cwhat contracts they agree or what CPA agrees,\u201d Torres said, so that his signature on the programmatic agreement \u201cis not the last one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNormally once they sign [the agreement] every one else goes on their own. But we would like to come back and say \u2018what have you agreed to,\u2019 \u2018do we agree on the contracts you\u2019ve had with the other departments?\u2019\u201d Torres explained.<\/p>\n
The negotiations for this agreement come as previous agreements to fund over million-dollar cultural and historical projects for another military project, the Marianas Island Range Complex\u201d project, or MIRC, remains unfunded.<\/p>\n
The MIRC agreement also identified military \u201cconstraint\u201d and mitigation areas and measures agreed to for Tinian that Torres believes had been \u201cundermined\u201d by a more recent and larger-scale live-fire training proposal, the CNMI Joint Military Training project, on the island.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The administration of Gov. Ralph DLG Torres has finalized its version of a programmatic agreement…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[418,26,124,200],"class_list":["post-227113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-air-force","tag-cnmi","tag-cpa","tag-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227113","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=227113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}