SAIPAN — Angelo Villagomez, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said a federal deep-sea mining push affecting waters tied to the Marianas is moving on a timeline that leaves the community little room to respond, with a public comment deadline falling on Monday.
Speaking on the NMI News Service program Good Morning Marianas, Villagomez said that if leaders were serious about working with the community, the process would be built around local concerns and local timing rather than compressed deadlines.
Villagomez explained how the federal government leases offshore areas for resource activity through the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), a process he compared to the same legal framework used for offshore oil and gas leasing. Villagomez said the current effort represents the first time the United States has tried deep-sea mining.
Villagomez also pointed to the role of the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument in limiting where deep-sea mining could occur. He said the trench unit of the monument “bans deep sea mining within its borders,” but the seabed outside the monument does not receive the same protection, placing the focus of the current debate on areas beyond the monument boundary.
In the interview, Villagomez described his earlier work helping form Friends of the Mariana Trench to advocate for protections around the northern islands and surrounding waters, noting that federal control of waters helped shape the push for federal protections.
The conversation also touched on a proposed revenue-sharing concept that has circulated in the deep-sea mining discussion. Villagomez said that any such amount being discussed should be understood as a “courtesy,” not a guaranteed share required by law, and argued that it does not resolve the community’s core concerns about process and timing.
Villagomez said environmental review requirements such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that are typically part of federal permitting processes intended to prevent long-term harm, but he voiced concern that environmental protection appears to be receiving less weight than resource extraction in the current approach.
Villagomez also pointed to what he called a long lag in fully resourcing the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument, saying it took 15 years for the management plan to be finalized and noting it was ultimately published in 2024. He said the monument now has staff, an office on Saipan, and active programming, but argued it “took longer than it should.”
Watch the full interview on the NMI News Service social Facebook page and YouTube channel.