Every environmental impact that the Tinian Women Association and three other environmental groups are alleging in their lawsuit is now subject to National Environmental Policy Act review, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.<\/p>\n
Taylor N. Ferrell, trial attorney of the DOJ Environmental and Natural Resources Division, said that all stakeholders who wish to participate in the administrative process of reviewing the environmental impacts of the CNMI Joint Military Training program have a full opportunity to do so now.<\/p>\n
Accordingly, Ferrell said, there is no practical or legal reason for the U.S. District Court for the NMI to order the U.S. Department of the Navy to redo the environmental impact statement it completed for the Guam relocation of Marines, which was substantially complete in 2010 and supplemented in 2015.<\/p>\n
Ferrell\u2019s arguments is intended to support the Department of the Navy\u2019s and Department of Defense\u2019s motion for summary judgment in connection with these four group\u2019s lawsuit.<\/p>\n
The groups\u2014the Tinian Women Association, Guardians of Gani, Pagan Watch, and the Center for Biological Diversity\u2014are suing the Navy and Defense departments and their top officials for alleged violation of the NEPA and Administrative Procedure Act over their decision to relocate 5,000 U.S. Marines from Okinawa to Guam and to conduct live-fire training on Tinian and Pagan. <\/p>\n
Ferrell said the Navy studied the CJMT and the Guam relocation of Marines as separate actions as each serves important independent purposes.<\/p>\n
As the court has observed, Ferrell said, the Guam relocation honors political commitments and binding international legal obligations between the U.S. and Japan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe record also shows that CJMT holds independent significance: it provides a forum for joint and allied training on U.S.-controlled land, which is currently unavailable in the Pacific theater,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Nothing in the record supports the groups\u2019 contention that Okinawa-based Marines would not be able to \u201cfunction as a fighting force\u201d once relocated to Guam, Ferrell said.<\/p>\n
He said the court should defer to the Navy secretary\u2019s \u201cwell-reasoned decision\u201d regarding what training is necessary to relocate the Marines as outlined in the Guam International Agreement and political commitments made by the U.S. government to Japan.<\/p>\n
Ferrell said the groups now claim that the Navy did not study the cumulative impacts on Tinian of the firing ranges planned for the Guam relocation, together with the expanded ranges contemplated as part of CJMT.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut these projects are mutually exclusive: the Tinian ranges studied in the Guam relocation are the \u2018no action alternative\u2019 for CJMT on Tinian and will not be built if CJMT is approved,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Accordingly, he said, the groups\u2019 concerns are academic.<\/p>\n
Ferrell pointed out that the groups\u2019 new claim concerning the Mariana fruit bat is untimely and also fails on its merits.<\/p>\n
He said the Navy did study the Marine relocation\u2019s cumulative impacts on the Mariana fruit bat, and the Navy reasonably scoped that analysis.<\/p>\n
He said the court should defer to the Navy secretary\u2019s reasonable judgments and expertise on matters of military training and reject the groups\u2019 unfounded accusation that the Navy eliminated training from its NEPA review.<\/p>\n
Ferrell said the Navy did analyze the impact of proposed ranges on Tinian.<\/p>\n
Ferrell said that, as previously discussed, the CJMT would replace the four Tinian-based ranges that were approved in the 2010 Record of Decision. <\/p>\n
Thus, he said, the currently approved Tinian ranges and the CJMT-based training projects will not co-exist. If they do not co-exist, he pointed out, they cannot, by definition, have cumulative impacts.<\/p>\n
Ferrell said the groups\u2019 new argument that the Navy failed to consider the cumulative impacts to Mariana fruit bats is not properly argued before the court.<\/p>\n
He said the groups, two years into this litigation, allege and argue for the first time that the Navy failed to consider the cumulative impacts of the Guam relocation on the Mariana fruit bats. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every environmental impact that the Tinian Women Association and three other environmental groups are alleging…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[3539,18315,259,19034],"class_list":["post-280739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-cjmt","tag-guam-international-agreement","tag-lawsuit","tag-tinian-women-association"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280739","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}