by Mindy Aguon

Guam - The Navy has failed to follow the law's requirements in its effort to examine alternatives to the Pagat sites as the appropriate location for the live fire training ranges. Guam Preservation Trust, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and We Are Guahan attorney Nicholas Yost sent a letter to the Joint Guam Program Office stating that the Navy has inverted the scoping process.

Yost writes that the Navy has attempted wrongfully to limit scoping to preselected alternatives rather than using scoping to devise the alternatives which then appear in the Draft SEIS, which he says is in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. Yost says the range of alternatives to be studied in an EIS emerges from and after the scoping process.

As we reported the Navy has announced that it identified five alternatives for the range complex - two adjacent to Route 15 and three located at Naval Magazine.