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Military buildup threatens to overwhelm Guam

If Guam doesn’t get money soon from the federal government to help prepare for the massive military buildup coming to the island in the next few years, it could affect not only the island’s permanent residents but also the quality of life for the service members and families who will move there, the island’s governor told lawmakers.

“No American community can shoulder the challenges of a 30 percent increase in population” in such a short time, Guam Gov. Felix Camacho said.

Guam’s population of about 171,000 includes about 14,000 people connected to the Defense Department, but that is expected to triple, to more than 40,000, in a five-year period, said David Bice, executive director of the Joint Guam Program Office for the Navy’s assistant secretary for installations and environment.

That includes 8,000 Marines and their 9,000 family members relocating from Okinawa to Guam by 2014, as well as the addition of about 1,000 airmen at Andersen Air Force Base.

Including active-duty airmen, reservists and dependents, the population of Andersen will swell from about 8,500 to nearly 12,000 by early in the next decade.

The people of Guam expect the federal government to underwrite the costs directly related to the military buildup, Camacho told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on May 1.

Guamanians are worried about the potential strains on their port, roads, electrical system, health care system, wastewater system and social programs.

Camacho noted that military personnel and their families “will travel the same roads, use the same resources and live in the same community we all share today. ... We want to be ready so we can continue to provide America’s front lines with a home away from home, without jeopardizing the basic services the government of Guam provides to the local community.”

Although Guam’s government has been working to improve roads, schools and other infrastructure, it is unfair to expect any community to take on such exponential growth in such a short timeline, he said.

Because of its strategic location in the western Pacific and its status as U.S. soil, Air Force leaders envision Guam becoming a major staging ground from which to project air power throughout Asia.

Buildup has already begun

The ramp-up is already underway. Andersen has hosted continuous long-range bomber deployments since 2004, and the base began construction in 2006 on a $242 million Expeditionary Combat Support Training campus.

The campus will host the 554th Red Horse Squadron and a combat communications squadron, both relocating from South Korea.

Andersen also expects to gain a permanent tanker presence as soon as fiscal 2009, and the base is slated to receive the first of seven Global Hawk surveillance drones in 2009 or 2010.

The Navy plans to build a transient nuclear aircraft carrier-capable pier at Apra Harbor and beef up its submarine presence, and the Army plans to put a ballistic missile defense task force on the island.

The most pressing concern, Camacho said, is Guam’s only civilian seaport, which expects to see six times the number of containers it now handles to support the construction boom.

The port will bear the brunt of incoming military cargo and will be a critical chokepoint to support the buildup, he said. Expanding the port will cost an estimated $195 million, Guam officials said.

Local officials have been taking steps on their own to prepare, he said. For example, the master plan for expansion of the port is before the Guam legislature.

But officials have received little Defense Department guidance, and uncertainties about the buildup contribute to the difficulty of crafting a fully formed plan, said Brian Lepore, the Government Accountability Office’s director of defense capabilities and management.

Commitments between the U.S. and the government of Japan, Camacho said, were made “without consideration of our capacity.”

“We support this, and recognize it will bring an economic boon to Guam in the way of jobs,” Camacho said. “But our lives will be forever changed.”

Guam Delegate Madeleine Bordallo said she is calling for memos of understanding between the government of Guam and its federal counterparts, as a step toward identifying sources of funds to pay for improvements to the civilian infrastructure, as well as ensure continuity in the realignment process.