Guam Delegate Revives Live Fire Safety Zone Bill

Pacific Daily News
By Gaynor Dumat-ol Daleno
May 20, 2014

HAGÅTÑA, Guam (Pacific Daily News, May 20, 2104) – After temporarily shelving H.R. 4022, Guam Delegate Madeleine Bordallo has revised the proposal to give the Navy authority to close a portion of the Guam National Wildlife Refuge at Ritidian as part of a safety zone for a Marine live-fire training range complex nearby.

The revised bill is scheduled for a discussion before the House Natural Resources Committee at 10 a.m. on May 21 in Washington, D.C.

The older version, which Bordallo pulled back temporarily last week, proposed "to authorize the Secretary of the Navy to establish a surface danger zone over the Guam National Wildlife Refuge or any portion thereof to support the operation of a live-fire training range complex."

Bordallo's amendment would give the Defense Department and Interior the responsibility to work things out.

Guam residents have questioned Bordallo’s earlier bill, in part because the local community didn’t know about it before it became an issue before a congressional subcommittee hearing. Public access to Ritidian has become a focal point in the public debate over the revised plan to move thousands of Marines from Okinawa to Guam.

The Department of the Interior is the parent department of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge at Ritidian.

"In order to accommodate the operation of a live-fire training range complex on Andersen Air Force Base-Northwest Field and the management of the adjacent Ritidian Unit of the Guam National Wildlife Refuge, the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of the Interior, notwithstanding the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act of 1966 (16 U.S.C. 668dd et seq.), may enter into an agreement providing for the establishment and operation of a surface danger zone which overlays the Ritidian Unit or such portion thereof as the Secretaries consider necessary," according to Bordallo's amended bill.

The Marines can't move forward with building an operational base here without a viable firing range, officials have said.