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Territory of Guam
Additional Resources
Fort Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, "Our Lady of Solitude", Guam
Background
Guam is 30 miles long and 9 miles wide, with an area of 212 square miles, located 6,000 miles west of San Francisco and 3,700 miles west-southwest of Honolulu. Guam's population is over 150,000, of which 24,000 are military-related. Nearly half the people are indigenous Chamorro, 25% are Filipino, 15% migrated from the US mainland, and the rest are Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Micronesian, and Indian. "Hafa Adai" (pronounced "half a day") is the traditional greeting.
Guam faces significant environmental challenges:
- Guam has a fragile drinking water infrastructure which is chronically at tisk of contamination from wastewater. Until recently, Guam had some of the worst water problems in the U.S., with over 500 million gallons of raw sewage spills between 1999 and 2002. Almost 8% of residents don't have access to adequate plumbing (6.5 times the national average of 1.2%). All residents have experienced boil-water notices within the last several years due to unsafe water.
- Guam's municipal dump is a 50-year-old unlined uncontrolled dump that has been over capacity for 20 years. It leaches chemicals into the Lonfit River and has caught fire repeatedly.
U.S. EPA, working closely with the 42 staff at Guam EPA and other organizations wihtin Guam, has made significant progress to address these issues.