After discussions on where to come up with $20 million to start the construction of a new landfill in Layon, certain Democrats in the 29th Guam Legislature aren't giving up their efforts to have the island's new landfill built at Guatali.  It was the 23rd Legislature that passed a bill that became Public Law 23-95, approving a landfill to be built in Guatali.

The Department of Land Management, however, has not signed off on the permit necessary for Guam Resource Recovery Partners to construct such a landfill.  Senator B.J. Cruz believes this is because Land Management is confused over whether the public law is citing the proper piece of land as the area was subdivided into three different parcels after the law was passed.

"Land Management seems to think that that's not what's in 23-95 and has held up the permit for an EPA clearance for it," said Senator Cruz.  DLM however says this is not really the reason why the permit has not been approved but rather because the land has not been zoned as "Industrial".

He continued, "From a zoning perspective, one thing we would want is to be ensured is that the use is allowable one way to do that is to so state in the public law one other way is to have the zoning be re-zoned to the proper zoning, which is Industrial.  So if either one of those two is not very, very clear, then we would have a hard time trying to approve a permit."

Cruz is pushing for the approval of this permit because he believes that the Guatali area would be a better alternative to the proposed Dandan Layon landfill site in Inarajan.  "The consent decree provides that under 10b that if a private landfill opens up then the private landfill would be the landfill and we'd no longer need to build this landfill.  The government doesn't need to build a landfill if a private landfill goes up," he said.

Senator Cruz says that this could save the over $200 million that it will cost the Government of Guam to build a landfill in the Dandan Layon area in Inarajan.  The Cruz amendment ultimately passed by majority vote.

But late Friday afternoon Senator Ben Pangelinan says his colleagues may have jumped the gun when they passed the Cruz amendment because the environmental impact statement that led lawmakers in the 23rd to pass the law in the first place was based on a study conducted on Parcel A, not Parcel B, as now so called reaffirmed by senators today.

Said Pangelinan, "The problem I have in doing that now - if we do that now we're going to bypass any public input or at least not guarantee, if you take a look at the entrance of Parcel B and the entrance to Parcel B, if you think Layon is in your backyard, the people that live next to Parcel B, the landfill won't be in their backyard, it will be in their bedroom."

Meanwhile Senator David Shimizu on the floor this afternoon expressed concerns about the possibility of being held in contempt by the federal court regarding the passage of the continued delay in meeting the mandates of the consent decree.  GRRP has been trying to for several years now to build a landfill in Guatali, along with an incinerator.

Senator Pangelinan's amendment eventually failed.  He commented that it didn't garner enough votes, noting that effectively what has happened is that those who voted to approve the Cruz amendment have allowed this property (Parcel B) to be rezoned for a landfill that was not approved by the 23rd Guam Legislature, which the so-called "reaffirmed" rezoning was not approved by the Department of Land Management or Guam Land Use Commission.