A portion of Sugar Dock and other public beaches in the CNMI would be temporarily closed for safety measures as Docomo Pacific lays down its new undersea fiber optic cable.<\/p>\n
Claudine Camacho, environmental services chief of Duenas and Camacho Associates Inc., announced the partial closures during a public hearing on Docomo Pacific\u2019s undersea fiber optic cable on Wednesday at the Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality conference room. <\/p>\n
Called ATISA, it is set to become operational in May 2017.<\/p>\n
Last year, the severance of IT&E\u2019s fiber optic cable\u2014the CNMI\u2019s lone undersea cable\u2014effectively disconnected the islands from the rest of the world as Internet and phone lines went down and put commerce at a standstill.<\/p>\n
Docomo Pacific, owned by NTT Docomo Inc. of Japan, decided to place its own fiber optic cable along the main islands of Saipan, Rota and Tinian.<\/p>\n
Camacho said in a presentation that Docomo\u2019s cables would be apart from IT&E\u2019s fiber optic cables \u201cin order to minimize risks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShould there be a natural phenomenon, we don\u2019t want to have all our eggs in the same basket. Having that separation would minimize that risk. We were also looking to create as much separation to existing cables as possible,\u201d said Camacho.<\/p>\n
On Saipan, Chalan Kanoa\u2019s Sugar Dock was chosen as the most viable spot on Saipan to lay the fiber optic cables.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve really explored all the feasible sites and we\u2019ve really narrowed it down to a site in Chalan Kanoa, just south of the Aquarius Beach Tower Hotel,\u201d said Camacho.<\/p>\n
She said that no trees would be removed or mown down and that Sugar Dock has an area that \u201cminimizes the impact on habitat.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis area is not within any land or sea preserved marine protected area, and there has been a thorough archaeological investigation of the area,\u201d said Camacho.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeveral subsurface trenches were performed by Dr. Stephen Athens of the International Archaeological Research Institute of Hawaii. All the trenches did not yield any intact cultural deposits,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Camacho added that the fiber optic cable would be buried in the sand and that the project would take about a month per island.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the environmental protection measures would be present, to contain sediment within the work zone during construction, which would be estimated to take about a month for each site,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Docomo\u2019s fiber optic site for Rota and Tinian would be at a beach southwest of Songsong village and the northern area of Tachog\u00f1a Beach, respectively.<\/p>\n
A portion of both beaches would be closed in order to accommodate the project, and like Saipan\u2019s site, both sites do not require any removal of trees and have undergone archaeological investigations.<\/p>\n
Docomo Pacific president and CEO Jonathan Kriegel was pleased with the hearing. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think we had a reasonably good turnout from the community. A variety of interests [were] represented\u2014businesses, youth groups, and that was good. I thought it was a very constructive set of questions about the environment and the potential business impact, so all the questions were in fact constructive,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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