Pentagon official says Guam will be ready for Marines by 2014

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By Frank Whitman, Special for Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Thursday, May 25, 2006

By the time 8,000 Marines and their families move from Okinawa to Guam, the United States and Japan will have spent billions of dollars ensuring Guam is ready for them, the top Pentagon official for Asian affairs assured residents of the U.S. island territory on Tuesday.

Details of the plan to relocate the Marines and their 9,000 family members to Guam from Okinawa by 2014 have yet to be worked out. But a large portion of the $10 billion committed to the move will be spent to ensure the island’s roads, sewer and water systems and other utilities can handle the additional population, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs Richard Lawless said while in Guam.

“We are not in any way, with this increase [in personnel] going to put additional burdens on the existing infrastructure,” Lawless said. The island’s facilities will be built up to at least equal, if not exceed, the demands expected from the additional thousands of people coming to the island, he said.

Lawless and Air Force Lt. Gen. Daniel Leaf, Pacific Command deputy commander and head of the Joint Guam Development Group, were in Guam to brief Gov. Felix Camacho, other Guam government officials and business leaders on the May 1 U.S.-Japanese agreement to realign U.S. forces in Japan, including moving the Marines to Guam.

Officials said the focus now shifts from Lawless’ policy work to implementation — Leaf’s job.

Leaf said he intends to submit a plan to Pacific Command head Adm. William Fallon by mid-July. Leaf also promised to work with Guam officials toward integrating military needs with Guam’s master plan.

“We’ll make every effort,” he said, to make it mutually beneficial for the Pentagon and people of Guam “and communicate it with the citizenry so they know what we’re doing and why.”

Officials have said boosting the small island’s infrastructure to support the increased population is among the main challenges to increasing military activity in Guam. The island’s water and waste water systems in particular are under federal court order to be brought up to Environmental Protection Agency standards — a $200 million undertaking just getting under way.

The money set aside for the Marine relocation is a pool to be used as planners see fit, Lawless said. He did not rule out the possibility of building a military-only water system and power grid.

“We certainly have included provisions in our agreement with the Japanese” to build separate water and power systems, he said. “The degree to which we should do that will be decided when we talk with the engineers here on Guam and then the staff of the governor.”

The government of Japan, which is funding much of the Marines’ relocation, will have some involvement in what projects are funded, Lawless said, “but our assumption is that the Japanese will do so in partnership with the people here on Guam. All the contracts will be organized and bid through a normal Department of Defense contracting procedure.

“I don’t want to understate the magnitude or the complexity of this,” he said. “This is really a fairly unique program, given all of the moving pieces and especially the timeline on which we’re executing it and the fact that we have a second country involved — the government of Japan.

“So it’s really important that we do it right and that we get it right the first time.”