DoD refuses public involvement in additional firing range complex studies

Eight (8) months after making its Record of Decision (“ROD”), DoD has asked the District Court of Hawaii for a “voluntary remand” to do additional studies on the firing ranges that DoD has planned on building at Pågat Village and the surrounding area.  DoD has refused to allow for any public input or participation in these new studies.

DoD’s request to add more information to its previous studies comes weeks after an e-mail from JGPO about DoD’s plans for Pågat Village was publicly released.  In the e-mail, which was sent seven days after DoD issued its ROD, Major General Bice of JGPO wrote to several high ranking DoD officials that DoD “can get all of the land eventually, including an SDZ [Surface Danger Zone] over Pagat; we have to be patient and build trust with the community first.”

The e-mail from JGPO also said that DoD could get Pågat Village and the surrounding area for its firing ranges if it eliminated “all impacts to Pagat historic village in the near term . . . .”  This is consistent with DoD’s request to use a different way of figuring out where the 10,000,000 bullets it plans on firing per year at the firing range complex will land in order to shrink the Surface Danger Zones.  The different method, which has been around since 2003, was not considered by DoD until after We Are Guåhan, the Guam Preservation Trust and the National Trust for Historic Preservation filed its lawsuit challenging DoD’s selection of Pågat Village.

“For over a year and a half, the community has insisted that DoD look at other alternatives and leave Pågat Village alone,” says We Are Guåhan member Cara Flores-Mays, “this time around, DoD must actually address our concerns instead of just going through the motions and manipulating numbers.”

We Are Guåhan, the Guam Preservation Trust and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, have asked that DoD allow for public involvement in any new studies about the firing range complex.  DoD has denied this request.

“This process will continue to be flawed,” continued Flores-Mays, “as long as DoD makes decisions without transparency or input from the people who will be affected.”

Resources:

Download DoD’s request to do new studies here.

Download the response filed by We Are Guahan, the Guam Preservation Trust and the National Trust for Historic Preservation here.