Please require the Department of State to apply the coral protection that is required by Executive Order 13089, thus ensuring that all FAA projects at the Majuro airport in the Marshall Islands refrain from again using coral reef mining as a source of fill for its airport master plan (this is desirable and indeed possible due to a huge supply of fill in the lagoon, away from coral). By doing so, the “addiction” of destructive coral mining can finally be ended in the Marshall Islands, where living coral is needed to protect the increasingly vulnerable shorelines.
The FAA, in a series of airport improvement projects using local contractors, has unintentionally caused the mining of near-shore lagoon coral reefs as a source of fill; the local EPA has always approved or ignored this practice. For example, in 2008 a large reef was mined by PII (a local company) for the ARFF fire station project (pictures available on Flickr). The US is required to follow a higher environmental road, thanks to Bill Clinton’s Executive Order 13089, which specifically requires protection of coral reefs even outside the US. Yet coral mining has again been approved, and may start within months, if local EPA approves it (for a second time) and if the US Embassy here in Majuro approves the local approval. See ten short videos of the reef at: www.youtube.com/user/atolldino/featured
Small school of feeding parrotfish (“scarids”) at the Majuro reservoir lagoon reef, due to be destroyed by dragline mining for the US FAA funded “RSA project”, a violation of US-RMI compact law and even FAA’s own Order 5050.4B.
08/20/12 Dean Jacobson posted on coral.aoml.noaa.gov
Today, PII, the company that has been permitted to mine a Majuro lagoon coral reef (over 500 meters along the shore) adjacent to the water reservoirs, has after a long pause continued construction work on the ramp onto which a huge dragline crane will be off-loaded from a barge. The EPA Board approval occurred without any examination of the reef that is to be destroyed, and without any EIA or public hearing. (The most recent public hearing considered an earlier plan that did not involve coral mining). This situation is a repetition of the flawed regulatory process, with pressure exerted by the RMI government, to mine the spectacular picnic area reef several kilometers to the west. The lack of transparency and due process was so egregious (and the reef so impressive) that FAA disallowed this dredge plan, and required that fill be obtained “off island”. FAA then reversed itself, and is now allowing a similar near shore coral reef (dredged from a shore-based crane). FAA needs to explain this inconsistency, especially when an alternative source of fill, in the shallow parts of Majuro lagoon, exists, which would prevent coral reef destruction.
I urge all concerned listers to send emails to FAA ([email protected]).
Please note that Ron Simpson now claims that FAA is free from any law designed to avoid damage to sensitive coastal regions, despite the existence of executive order 12114 (which specifically targets airport projects funded by FAA outside the US), and that the RMI is free to destroy its coral reefs with US funds in order to meet the FAA budget restrictions. This is not right.
To see the reservoir reef, google “Youtube” and “reservoir reef”. My channel is atolldino.
By the way, a Majuro senator, David Kramer (also of PII) is again publically calling for my deportation, and the editor of our local paper is calling on me to shut up, just because I publically criticized the recently approved EMP submitted by PII which fails to adequately present a coral rescue and replanting mitigation effort, as they had promised to do (even going so far as to depict reef balls as ellipses, side view, in a diagram). It is well known that mitigation plans here are not made in good faith.