“Legally speaking, it clears the way for the projects to proceed,” Sablan said at a press conference held at the JGPO office inside the Navy Base.
The Guam construction allotment in current fiscal year 2010 is about $900 million and includes both Japanese and U.S. funding.
Sablan said residents can expect to find several changes made in the final environmental impact statement.
The document is expected to be available for public review by the last week of July. No public meetings will be held for the final report as was done with the draft study earlier this year.
“We’ve picked up and expounded on some issues. We’ve clarified, we’ve done additional studies and analyses and that will be reflected in the document,” Sablan said.
He said a meeting of the Department of Defense Tiger Team was held in Hawaii two weeks ago to discuss the preliminary document. The group is comprised of DOD stakeholders, volume managers, subject matter experts, contractors and everyone involved in this endeavor.
“We went through all of the work that has gone through taking this document from a draft to a preliminary final,” he said, adding the contractors have provided vast input to the document which contains about 10,000 comments received from the draft copy.
