{"id":397979,"date":"2023-08-18T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-18T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=397979"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T14:00:00","slug":"CUC-worries-contractors-may-be-unable-to-bid-for-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/CUC-worries-contractors-may-be-unable-to-bid-for-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"CUC worries contractors may be unable to bid for projects"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. is concerned that many of its contractors may be unable to bid for its many federally-funded projects because of the \u201ctouchback\u201d rule that is going to go into effect by the end of next month.<\/p>\n

In his report during CUC\u2019s regular board meeting yesterday, CUC water\/wastewater division acting chief engineer Larry Manacop cited the \u201ctouchback\u201d rule affecting many of the CNMI\u2019s foreign workers and environmental permitting delays as among some of their challenges in moving many projects forward.<\/p>\n

Manacop said they have since learned that one of their contractors would be sending home about 98 of its staff due to the \u201ctouchback\u201d rule. With such potential for limited staffing, many of these contractors will be unable to bid on CUC projects, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTouchback\u201d refers to the requirement for foreign workers to leave the CNMI before their work visas could be renewed for a third consecutive time. That departure requirement also means that they will have to stay away from the CNMI until a new permit is approved, which could take months.<\/p>\n

Manacop said he did mention the \u201ctouchback\u201d rule during one of their meetings with federal agencies at a workshop in Honolulu. \u201cYes, we\u2019re very grateful for the many millions of dollars that you guys are providing, but also please try to make it easier for us to implement these projects,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In essence, Manacop said, you have federal agencies that are providing the CNMI millions of dollars to build projects, while one federal agency\u2014U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services\u2014is restricting workers from working on these projects. He USCIS is making it difficult for CNMI contractors to get needed workers.<\/p>\n

On the issue of environmental permitting, Manacop said that getting environmental clearances from the National Environmental Policy Act, Historic Preservation Office, and Division of Fish and Wildlife are the most challenging for CUC. \u201cThat\u2019s what [preventing] a lot of these projects [from] moving forward,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Manacop said they have projects that already have designs from two years ago, but they are still struggling with HPO until now to get a memorandum of agreement.<\/p>\n

He appealed to the CUC board to help them in this matter, that if there is something the board can help with the permitting process, they really need assistance in this aspect.<\/p>\n

CUC project manager Nicolette Villagomez said CUC is actively working with the state HPO, along with the Office of Planning and Development, and the Infrastructure Recovery Program that is now under OPD, to put together a blanket agreement for all U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grants to streamline their archeological permitting process.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s something that we are still in negotiations with,\u201d Villagomez said, adding that they had a meeting with the National Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and EPA, and their lawyers to put together this agreement that they can use in moving forward and at least take care of all the archeological historic resource investigations.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Commonwealth Utilities Corp. water\/wastewater division acting chief engineer Larry Manacop, third from right, in blue shirt, talks about the \u201ctouchback\u201d rule and environmental permitting as among some challenges in moving forward with many federally funded projects during a regular CUC board meeting yesterday. Manacop and other CUC officials also talked about their accomplished, pending, and upcoming projects.<\/p>\n

-FERDIE DE LA TORRE
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The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. is concerned that many of its contractors may be unable to…<\/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-397979","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\/397979","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=397979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}