U.S. to delay Guam troop move

Satoshi Ogawa / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent

WASHINGTON--A planned transfer of about 8,000 U.S. marines from Okinawa Prefecture to Guam could be delayed beyond the 2014 target, perhaps by up to six years, according to an office of the U.S. Defense Department.

A final environmental impact statement released by the department's Joint Guam Program Office on Tuesday includes a proposal to delay the transfer of the troops and their dependents to as late as 2020 to reduce environmental impact from the personnel relocation and associated construction projects. However, the statement said a new time frame would be decided later.

To address the impact on the environment, the statement discusses two mitigation methods. The first is "force flow reduction" or rescheduling the arrival of marines and their dependents. The second is "adaptive program management," which adjusts the tempo and sequence of transfer-related construction due to infrastructure limitations in Guam.

"Extending the arrival of the military population over a greater period of time (e.g. beyond 2014) would lessen the need for various infrastructure upgrades to meet peak loading demand in 2014," the statement said. "The proposed force flow reduction mitigation measure would both lower the overall peak population and decrease the rate of short-term population increase resulting from the proposed action, thereby reducing demands on utilities and many island services."

The statement presents a proposal to delay the arrival of the entire military population of 10,552, which includes 8,552 marines from Okinawa Prefecture, to Guam until 2017 by lowering the number of arrivals per year, for instance to 2,468 in 2014.

It also includes a different proposal to complete the transfer by 2020 by increasing the number of arrivals per year gradually from 2,019 in 2014 to 7,408 in 2017 by implementing both the flow reduction measure and adapting construction tempo.

The statement also said the Japanese government would shoulder 740 million dollars (65 billion yen) for the construction of public infrastructure, such as water and sewerage, but added that construction of the U.S. base in Guam should be frozen until the funds are actually received from Tokyo.

The Japanese government had received the final environmental impact statement before the public disclosure, but a source at the Japanese Embassy in Washington said they received no U.S. proposal on a new completion target for the troop relocation.