Pagat now historic site – will be affected by military expansion

http://www.guampdn.com/article/20100520/NEWS01/5200301/Pagat-now-historic-site

Pagat now historic site

By Peter Urban • PDN Washington Bureau • May 20, 2010

The National Trust for Historic Preservation will announce today that the Pagat area of Yigo, which some islanders believe is threatened by the coming military buildup, will join an elite list of 11 historic, endangered sites from around the country.

Inclusion on this list will ensure watchdogs on Guam, in the mainland and in government will see what happens to Pagat during the buildup, said Joe Quinata, who helped spearhead Pagat’s application.

Quinata works for the Guam Preservation Trust, which pushed to put Pagat on the list earlier this year.

In this area, remnants of an ancient Chamorro village pepper the jungle floor and a large cave, which was probably once a source of fresh water for the villagers. It still welcomes hikers and tourists every day.

Quinata said he hoped Pagat’s place on this list will keep it this way.

“It’s a spotlight. It puts the players into perspective and it pressures them to make the right decisions,” he said yesterday. Pagat’s inclusion on the list isn’t official until today and the Guam Preservation Trust will call a press conference to provide more details.

The site of Pagat village and Pagat cave is close to where the military plans to build a firing range for Marines who will transfer to Guam from Okinawa in the near future.

Once the firing range is operational, access to the village site and cave will be at least partially restricted to the public, according to Pacific Daily News files.

The draft Environmental Impact Statement released last year suggests the area would be off limits to hikers year round, but retired Marine Corps Col. John Jackson, director of the Joint Guam Program Office, said last January that the cave will be open to anyone about 13 weeks a year.

This was “not very well articulated” in the draft EIS, creating confusion, he said.

Thirteen weeks a year isn’t enough — and who knows if that window won’t shrink to less or no time per year, Quinata said yesterday. He asked: How will the public protect the historic site if they can’t go there?

Maj. Neil Ruggiero, JGPO spokesman, wrote in an e-mail yesterday that the site won’t need protection.

Live fire at the range won’t damage any of the archeological remains in the Pagat area, Ruggiero wrote.

Although the area may be accessible less often, management by the Department of Defense will protect Pagat from “vandalism, illegal dumping, theft, and other forms of degradation,” he wrote.

Pacific Daily News files show that Pagat Cave has often been plagued by illegal dumping, but yesterday it was cleaner than it has been in years.

Mayors, the Guam Visitors Bureau and volunteers led a major cleanup last November, after PDN published a story about how GovGuam Christmas decorations were dumped on the Pagat path.

Quinata yesterday said it was better to leave the area open and educate the public to cherish it than to take it away to protect it.

Quinata spoke at a Mayors Council meeting yesterday, stating that although the area had made the list, local efforts to protect the area must continue.

“Our message is not that we don’t want the buildup,” Quinata told mayors during their regular council meeting. “We’re focusing to protect and preserve Pagat village.”

The list

Most of the places that have been selected for the list are historical structures that are still standing, but are threatened by urban development or poor maintenance. Schools, stadiums, hotels and bridges that are historic, but not ancient, dominate the list.

Richard Moe, president of the national trust, said yesterday that Pagat was selected because so many islanders were worried about the military buildup’s devastating threat. The list has been released annually for 23 years by the private nonprofit corporation.

“These endangered places — from a Civil War battlefield to the farthest U.S. territory in the Pacific — are enormously important to our understanding of who we are as a nation and a people,” Moe said.

Quinata said he expected the Pagat area site would be chosen because it was “unique,” and threatened by a shift that could transform the entire island.

The debate over how progress may trample Guam’s culture is on everyone’s mind, he said.

Gov. Felix Camacho, who is currently in Washington, D.C., said Pagat’s inclusion on this list could help change the plan to build the firing range. Camacho believes Marines should continue to use the range on Tinian instead.

“First and foremost is the historic significance of that site, and this (recognition) certainly would play against their demand,” Camacho said.

The national trust has waded in these waters before.

In 2007, the national trust selected Piñon Canyon in Colorado, which included an American highway that predates automobiles and undisturbed prehistoric archeological sites, but was threatened by a growing Army base.

Congress and the Army have since chosen to expand a different base, according to the national trust’s website and the Denver Post.

Illuminated: Candles are lit as the Pacific Daily News takes video images inside the otherwise dark interior of Pagat Cave yesterday. (Jacqueline Hernandez/Pacific Daily News/jhernande7)

Cave entrance: One of two entrance trails to Pagat Cave is photographed yesterday. The cave, within the ancient Pagat Village, has gained national attention as an endangered national historic site. (Jacqueline Hernandez/Pacific Daily News/jhernande7)