By Katie Worth
Pacific Daily News; kworth@guampdn.com
The battle over the island of Pagan's potential
mineral riches rages on, despite a decision last week by the Northern
Marianas public lands board to deny a controversial mining permit to an
Arizona-based company.
The Marianas Public Lands Authority
board of directors' abrupt decision to end negotiations with
mining-hopeful Azmar International Trading Company last week was at
first celebrated by many Pagan and other Commonwealth of the Northern
Mariana Islands residents who had been advocating for the commission to
consider other offers as well as Azmar's, said Cinta Kaipat, founding
member of advocacy group Paganwatch.
She said the group isn't letting down its guard.
"It's one of those things where we
say don't cash that check yet. We've been down this road before where
we think we have won something, but (Azmar) is very tenacious and they
just won't give it up," she said.
As for their part, Azmar officials
also have provided assurances that last week's decision isn't the end
of their bid to mine the island, and are calling for the commission to
return to the negotiating table once more.
The controversy surrounds the
natural resources on Pagan, which is among the northernmost islands in
the Mariana islands chain. Pagan, about 300 miles north of Guam and
currently populated by only a handful of residents, is believed to be
rich in the valuable volcanic ash pozzolan, a mineral used in very
strong concrete. Some estimates have pegged the value of the resource
at $10 billion.
Azmar had proposed to give the CNMI
public lands authority 7 percent of the gross revenues of the pozzolan,
plus other taxes, but some CNMI residents have said this arrangement is
not generous enough to the commonwealth, and have raised concerns about
Azmar's qualifications.
At the meeting last week, the public
land board members said they were rejecting Azmar's application to mine
Pagan because the company had repeatedly failed to provide key
documents necessary for the permit, Kaipat said. In November, the MPLA
board had agreed to a 15-day period to negotiate a draft mining permit
with Azmar behind closed doors. However, the board said the draft that
the MPLA had written and sent to Azmar's attorneys had come back with
about 90 percent of the items crossed out and rewritten, Kaipat said.
In a letter to Saipan and Guam
media, Azmar spokesman Don Farrell, who served as chief of staff for
Guam's former senator and former Gov. Carl Gutierrez, said Azmar was at
first surprised at the board's rejection, which he said "seemed totally
irrational."
However, he wrote, Azmar officials
had "discovered the rational reason" behind that action. He said Azmar
officials had met with the CNMI governor and MPLA board Chairwoman Ana
Demapan Castro at an economic conference in Los Angeles in September,
where he said they had come to "an agreement that would ensure
negotiations for a permit would be completed."
After the rejection last week, he
said, "it slowly dawned on us that during that meeting, the members
never once referred to the Sept. 29 agreement. It is now our belief
that they were never informed of it."
As far as Azmar is concerned, he said, they are still at the negotiating table.
Castro and other members of the MPLA board and administration were not available for comment yesterday.
