CNMI-ning: Last month, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management moved forward with plans to open up to seafloor mining more than 69 million acres offshore of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam. The action was part of the administration’s Outer Continental Shelf leasing process. The next step is an environmental assessment. All of these actions are undertaken following Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14285, “Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources.”
The original proposal was for about half the area – 35.5 million acres – all of which was east of the island chain and thought to contain ferromanganese nodules. Then, following industry interest in polymetallic sulfide deposits to the west of CNMI, the area of possible seafloor mining was expanded to 69.1 million acres.
David M. Apatang, governor of CNMI, commented on the proposal: “As expressed by many in the CNMI, little to no information has been made available by BOEM or any of its federal partners for anyone to thoroughly understand the potential effects of deep seabed mining to the near surface and abyssal plains.”
Guam’s governor, Lourdes A. Leon Guerrero, and other elected leaders of the island registered their opposition to the project. The legislatures of both Guam and CNMI have adopted resolutions calling for a moratorium on deep-sea mining.
BOEM has said that this has no bearing on plans to lease the area, according to a report in the Pacific Island Times. BOEM also informed the governors that the quantity of public comments on the proposal will not be a deciding factor, either, the newspaper reported.
Guam Senator William Parkinson commented on BOEM’s statement: “BOEM has now doubled down on a course the people of the Marianas have already rejected,” the Pacific Island Times reported. “This is yet another example of federal agencies treating our region like a sacrifice zone, despite clear and unified opposition from Guam, the CNMI, marine scientists, and local communities.”
Meanwhile, BOEM is proposing revisions to federal regulations governing mining on the outer continental shelf, including the regulation that requires the BOEM director to notify adjacent or affected state governors and local governments and organizations about environmental issues related to mineral prospecting.
Show-Cause Hearing: On June 5, at an evidentiary hearing in 2nd Circuit Court, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources and the Board of Land and Natural Resources will have to show why they should not be held in contempt for violating the court’s order regarding access to the historic Haleakalā trail, which cuts through Haleakalā Ranch.
The order, which took effect January 1 after a stay of several months, requires the state to post signs showing the trail’s location, prohibits the state from allowing obstructions, and bars the state from allowing anyone other than pedestrian members of the public and Native Hawaiian cultural practitioners from using the six-foot-wide trail.
Even so, attorneys for plaintiffs Public Access Trails Hawaiʻi and David Henderson Brown argue — in a March 4 motion for an order to show cause for civil contempt and request for an evidentiary hearing — that the signs the DLNR have posted are inadequate, obstructions on the trail (i.e., ranch gates) remain, and vehicles have been allowed to cross those portions of the trail that intersect ranch roads.
The attorneys also argue that the state let a portion of the trail be cleared and graded for vehicular access.
As relief, PATH and Brown want the court to modify its order so that the DLNR and Land Board are prohibited from “failing to place a sufficient number of enduring, visible markers along the boundaries of the Haleakalā Trail property such that the location of the Haleakalā Trail can be readily identified … for the entire distance identified in the metes and bounds.” They also want the order to be modified to prevent the state from allowing the installation or maintenance of obstructions “within, on, or across Olinda Road, or any other state-owned land, within 50 yards of Point 1 of the Haleakalā Trail as identified in the metes and bounds of the Final Judgment entered in Civil No. 11-1-0031(3).”
PATH and Brown also ask the court to impose compensatory civil sanctions and punitive sanctions, grant restitution for legal fees and costs, and appoint a special master to oversee the state’s compliance with the order, and/or issue orders necessary to compel compliance.