{"id":397690,"date":"2023-08-03T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-03T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=397690"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T14:00:00","slug":"Woman-sues-DLNR-DFW-over-permits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/Woman-sues-DLNR-DFW-over-permits\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman sues DLNR, DFW over permits"},"content":{"rendered":"

A woman has filed a complaint with the Superior Court against the Department of Lands and Natural Resources, Division of Fish and Wildlife, and their respective department heads over delays in issuing a clearing permit.<\/p>\n

Alexandria Davis Steeley, through her attorney, Jeanne H. Rayphand, has filed a complaint for review of agency action, for declaratory judgment, injunctive relief, and damages against DLNR, DLNR Secretary Sylvan Igisomar, DFW, and DFW director Manny Pangelinan.<\/p>\n

In her complaint, Steeley alleges that DLNR and DFW are withholding and unreasonably delaying the issuance of a decision on her application for a clearing permit for home construction.<\/p>\n

Saipan Tribune tried to obtain comments from Pangelinan and Igisomar but they have yet to respond.<\/p>\n

As relief, the plaintiff is asking the court to issue a declaratory judgment stating that the defendants have unlawfully withheld and unreasonably delayed issuing final agency action on her permit application.<\/p>\n

In addition, the plaintiff wants the court to issue a declaratory judgment stating that she is not required to obtain a DFW permit to clear her property; or alternatively order DFW to grant her a permit to clear her property.<\/p>\n

Lastly, Steeley wants the court to award her damages suffered as a result of the defendants delaying the issuance of her permit, in an amount to be determined by the court, as well as attorney\u2019s fees.<\/p>\n

According to the complaint, Steeley submitted her non-commercial permit application and DFW site assessment application last Feb. 10.<\/p>\n

On March 1, the Division of Environmental Quality granted Steeley her non-commercial earthmoving and erosion control permit while DFW took about another two months to respond to her application.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn spite of attempts to follow up the DFW application, it was not until May 4, 2023, that any written response was received,\u201d said the complaint.<\/p>\n

On May 4, the plaintiff received an email from Pangelinan stating that DFW had sent her attorney a copy of the \u201cStop-Clock\u201d order, putting a stay on the processing of her clearing permit.<\/p>\n

The \u201cStop-Clock\u201d order was dated March 31, but it was allegedly not provided to the applicant until May.<\/p>\n

On the order, DFW claims that it did two surveys without finding any presence of an endangered species on the lot. However, DFW later did a third survey and claims to have detected one male Nightingale Reed Warbler within 50 meters of Steeley\u2019s property.<\/p>\n

On May 5, Steeley, through her attorney, contacted Pangelinan regarding the option to discuss mitigation. However, she did not receive a response and on May 30, the plaintiff and her attorney decided to appeal the decision to Igisomar.<\/p>\n

To date, Steeley claims the defendants have not responded nor acted upon her application and appeal.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The CNMI Guma Hustisia or CNMI Judiciary in Susupe.<\/p>\n

-KIMBERLY B. ESMORES
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A woman has filed a complaint with the Superior Court against the Department of Lands…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397690","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}