Attending were Lt. Gov. Eloy Inos and Rep. Joe Palacios along with DEQ Director Frank Rabauliman, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration engineer Jim Wright and the Department of Public Works secretary, Martin Sablan.
The Laolao Bay road and coastal management improvement project was granted a little less than $3 million through the ARRA grant administered by NOAA.
The road project itself cost $1.4 million which included pavement, drainage inlets and pipes as well as a concrete sediment chamber at the end of the road. The road construction was done by GPPC.
Rabauliman stated in his remarks that the reason for the project was to protect and conserve the Laolao Bay by paving the road and putting in drainage systems, aside from other acts, to prevent excessive runoff from going into the bay.
“This will not only benefit the species in the bay but the community as well,” he added.
Rabauliman at the same time gave recognition and thanks to Fran Castro and Tim Lang, the nonsource pollution project manager, for their hard work and dedication to the project.
Rabauliman ended his speech by stating, “I am amazed and impressed with the design.”
Inos, for his part, started out with a brief story on how the road used to be. “I could barely drive on this road and I remember having to remove huge boulders to get through.”
Now motorists are able to drive down smoothly. Its “good for the community as well as to the environment,” he added.
“We will strive to get more federal funds and continue maximizing our efforts to assure the quality of Laolao Bay and we will go a long way to protecting our marine environment as well as our community” said Inos.
Jim Wright, who is from Seattle, Washington community restoration program under NOAA, thanked DEQ along with their partners for “letting NOAA work with you and making a better world for the fish as well as the people.”
Along with the road project, other measures are being implemented to assure the conservation of the marine life at Laolao Bay. These include marine monitoring, vegetation of the forests, turtle nesting monitoring, assessment of corals and engineering designs for the Gapgap Road adjacent to Kagman Road.
