Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 33, Number 9, 1 September 2016 — Suit filed to prevent live-fire training [ARTICLE]

Suit filed to prevent live-fire training

Earthjustice has challenged a U.S. Navy plan to stage live-fire war games in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The Navy proposal would move 4,000 Marines from Okinawa to Guam to stage war games on the islands of īinian and Pagan. The Navy already leases two-thirds of īinian and hopes to acquire Pagan, an island with two volcanoes that has been officially evacuated since a 1981 eruption, although some indigenous Chamorro residents have since returned. Tinian's population just tops 3,000 and most residents

are Chamorro and low-ineome. The īinian Women's Association, Guardians of Gani, PaganWatch and the Center for Biological Diversity have been fighting the proposal since it was first announced in 2013. Now representing them, Earthjustice contends the war games would be destructive to native forests, coral reefs, native wildlife and prime farmland as well as cultural and historical sites. With exercises including artillery, rockets, amphibious and air assaults and ship-to-shore naval bombardment, Earthjustice also alleges communities on īinian would be exposed to high-decibel noise and could lose access to traditional fishing grounds, cultural sites and recreational beaches. "When the Northern Marianas agreed to remain part of the United States, destroying the northern twothirds of our island with live-fire training and bombing was never part of the deal," Llorine Hofschneider of the īinian Women's Association said in a release. "We refuse to accept the Navy's plans to subject our children to nearly eonstant bombardment."