Transcript
David Henkin (right) meets with Tinian residents concerned about proposed US military training on their island.
Photo: Dan Lin
DAVID HENKIN: We are challenging the environmental review that the navy has already conducted, and if the court agrees with us that that analysis was inadequate - and we believe it was clearly inadequate because the navy failed to look at the impacts of everything that would be associated with moving the marines from Okinawa to Guam; the environmental review that was done in 2010 looked only at the impacts in Guam and then only a limited amount of training in Tinian, really for target practice ranges, and no training on the island of Pagan; and now the military is proposing just blistering attacks with artillery and mortar rounds on both islands, amphibious assaults, and then on the island of Pagan ship-to-shore shelling and the dropping of bombs - if the court agrees with us that the failure to disclose these impacts before making the decision to move the marines to Guam violated the law, as we believe it did, we hope the court will order the navy to do a new environmental review that fully reveals all of the impacts.
JOHNNY BLADES: Would it have a bearing on the shape and size of the big relocation of the five thousand marines from Okinawa in Japan to Guam, which of course is the foundation for this plan?
DH: What the law requires is the navy be honest and forthright with the American people about what all of the impacts would be associated with moving five thousand marines to Guam, including the devastation associated with the live-fire training they need to conduct in the Northern Marianas in order to be "mission ready". We are hopeful that once all that information is out on the table, that the navy would have second thoughts about its plans and would make changes as they have in the past to try and reduce environmental impacts. The original plan was for 8,600 marines to go to Guam, and that was scaled back based on the effects on Guam. Once all of the effects in the Northern Marianas are known we would hope the navy would be responsive to the concerns of the local populace. But if not, that information would allow the people of the Northern Marianas to appeal to their elected officials to force the navy to make a different decision.
JB: If it's left up to the navy though to conduct a full assessment, would it be independent?
DH: Well, the law has a mechanism in place for the public, including outside experts, to do peer review of any document or any analysis that the navy does. And if the navy fails to do an adequate job of looking at the full range of impacts, as they did the first go round, they could expect to see us back in court, and we would hope that the court would continue to hold them to what the law requires.