The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could decide the fate of Tarague Beach, a site of cultural and ecological significance for the Indigenous CHamoru people of Guam. The U.S. Air Force seeks to continue its open detonation of obsolete munitions at the beach, which sits directly above the island’s primary aquifer, supplying 80 percent of its drinking water. Moneaka Flores, a CHamoru activist, views this appeal as a setback in the prolonged struggle to protect her ancestral land.
“This is actually a delay for justice for us,” Flores stated. “We were moving forward in the District Court, and I consider this move by the Department of War to challenge it at the Supreme Court as a strategy to delay justice for our people and to answer to the law.”
Before World War II, Flores’ grandfather and great-grandfather cultivated copra at Tarague Beach, which was then Guam’s largest export. They also raised pigs and fished there. The Imperial Japanese Army’s invasion on the same day as Pearl Harbor forced the family to hide at their ranch on the beach until their capture. Like other CHamoru people, they suffered forced labor and other hardships under Japanese rule.
After the U.S. regained control of Guam, the CHamoru people faced the aftermath of over two years of mistreatment, including forced sexual slavery imposed on Indigenous women by Japanese soldiers. Following the extensive destruction caused by U.S. bombings, the military took over nearly two-thirds of the land for military installations. Although some land has been returned due to community resistance, the Department of Defense still controls nearly a third of Guam, and Flores’ family has not reclaimed their Tarague Beach property.
“My great-grandparents were devastated to lose Tarague Beach,” Flores said. “They couldn’t imagine their lives not going down there to fish and to hunt and to be in that jungle and in the ocean.”
Currently, the beach forms part of Andersen Air Force Base, with local residents needing military clearance to visit. While the explosive ordnance disposal range occupies the easternmost section, the rest of the beach remains a habitat for endangered sea turtles and migratory seabirds. Military family websites promote the beach for its campgrounds and playgrounds, highlighting that “one of the best things about Tarague is that it’s never crowded!”
Flores’ family eventually acquired land at a nearby beach for ranching. Occasionally, they observe smoke from the open detonation of outdated bombs and military ordnance.
The Air Force has sought permits for these detonations since 1982. In 2018, the National Academies of Sciences published a report identifying viable, less-polluting alternatives. Flores, along with the community group Prutehi Litekyan, sued in 2022, demanding the Air Force consider alternative disposal methods and locations under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). However, the Air Force argues that its obligations are only under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), which doesn’t require an analysis of alternative sites.
“The message that they’re sending us in refusing to follow the law is that we’re not worth their concern, we’re not worth the resources that it takes for them to take the safest measures to protect our island and our people,” Flores said. Advocates secured a victory last year when a federal appeals court ordered the military to comply with NEPA. But with the Supreme Court now accepting the case, that precedent is at risk.
The Air Force aims to overturn the appeals court ruling. It maintains that its adherence to RCRA, a 1976 hazardous waste management law, exempts it from NEPA’s requirements. Under RCRA, the Air Force only needs a permit showing the disposal meets certain environmental protection criteria without needing to consider other disposal options.
Neil Weare, co-director of Right to Democracy, a nonprofit focused on U.S. territories, sees the case in a broader colonial context. “We once again have the U.S. Supreme Court granting review to reconsider a lower court ruling that placed limits on federal power in U.S. territories,” Weare said. “This is part of a long trend where the Supreme Court consistently shows near total deference to federal power over people in U.S. territories.”
Weare noted that many recent Puerto Rico cases before the Supreme Court involved reversing lower court decisions favoring the territory. He highlighted that May will mark the 125th anniversary of the Insular Cases, a series of early 20th-century Supreme Court rulings that limited constitutional application in territories, partly due to the presence of “alien races.”
David Henkin, an attorney with Earthjustice representing Flores and other community members, said a ruling could take another year. “We could be looking at waiting until sometime in the spring to be back where we are right now,” Henkin said.
Henkin explained that NEPA, unlike RCRA, requires a comprehensive assessment of federal actions’ effects on communities, including considering alternative approaches. At Tarague Beach, alternatives might involve moving detonations away from fishing areas and the aquifer, or transporting munitions to the U.S. mainland.
“The Air Force has blatantly ignored things like impact on culture, the fact that these lands are stolen. It doesn’t even factor into the equation for them,” Henkin said. “That is blatantly illegal.”
For Flores, the situation at Tarague Beach is inseparable from Guam’s colonial history and ongoing military expansion.
“When we think about open detonation, we think about it against many decades now and many generations of environmental racism and injustice that we’ve had to endure from Agent Orange, PFAS, to dieldrin, to nuclear contamination from the testing in the Marshall Islands,” she said.
“The fact that the military insists on continuing this practice before analyzing the alternatives, before analyzing the impacts to the community, is a serious breach of trust. It’s an attack on our survival as Indigenous peoples in our own homeland.”
