by Krystal Paco

Guam - They call her "TESS", short for Truck Enforcement Screening Station, and unfortunately, she's been sitting idle just outside the Port Authority entrance in Piti for over six months.

With her ribbon cutting celebration held last summer, there were high hopes for TESS. Funded by the Federal Highway Administration and the Department of Defense, TESS is equipped with a weigh-in motion scale, a static scale facility, and a scale house intended to protect Guam's roadways from overweight trucks leaving the port.

But it looks like TESS can't start her job until the logistics are worked out.

Department of Public Works director Carl Dominguez said, "We need to put the legislation in place to set the fees. Mainly that to set the fees for the overweight trucks."

And with projects islandwide north to south ongoing to enhance Guam's roadways, Dominguez says the weighing machine is necessary to protect our investments, including reinforcement projects like that recently completed on Asan Bridge.

The bridge, which sits near the Polaris Point intersection, is close to 60 years old.

"We'll be able to determine whether the loads will be hazardous to the bridges and if they are we will turn them around. We will turn the trucks around," he said.

Committee chair on transportation Tom Ada tells KUAM News, addressing the logistics requires more stakeholder input. Ada says it was two months ago he met with DPW, but there's plenty of work ahead.

He said, "For example, the classification of various trucks and whatnot and of course a lot of representatives from the trucking industry were at that meeting also and they raised a lot of those issues. Another issue that needs to be addressed still is what do you do with a truck that overweight that's leaving the Port? Do you just slap a heavy fine on them or is there going to be an opportunity to let them turn around and will there be an area where they can unload some of their cargo so they can meet the weight limits."

Once the details are resolved, Ada says legislation will follow.

"Once all those details have been resolved then we can introduce legislation that would essentially establish the penalties that would be assessed on trucks that are overweight how many times are you going to allow an overweight truck to go through before you finally say that's it no more park your truck," he said.