12/16/10
Local residents sounded off at a Wednesday night meeting about the U.S. Navy's plans to boost the frequency of training off the West Coast, accusing the military of downplaying the potential damage to marine life. Eureka's Wharfinger Building was packed with people looking to air concerns about how sonar might affect marine mammals and fisheries and the potential effects of ordnance that includes depleted uranium used as part of the training exercises. An environmental impact statement on the increased exercises was completed in September, but local worries prompted Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, to ask the Navy to hold the meeting. Westhaven resident Sylvia De Rooy called the environmental analysis repetitive, obscuring the truth behind sonar use. She said the poor success rate of spotting whales from ships means they are exposed to sonar more frequently than is represented. ”If whales are dying at sea, do they know?” she said. The Navy's Northwest Training Range Complex has been in use since World War II. It is about 122,000 nautical square miles, stretching from the Olympic Peninsula in Washington to approximately the northern border of Mendocino County. The Navy plans to increase the frequency of training in those waters but not expand the range. Project Manager John Mosier said that the exercises are small, with single ships or small groups of ships and airplanes, the vast majority of which takes place off Puget Sound. There are some land-based activities in Puget Sound. All training in the southern part of the range occurs out beyond 12 nautical miles. The Navy uses the areas off that part of the range only about four times per year, Mosier said. Training with active sonar is critical to being able to detect modern submarines, and while sonar operators use simulators to train as well, that is not enough, Mosier said. He compared it to pilots who use simulators in flight training. ”Eventually, they have to fly the airplane for real,” Mosier said. Sonar would be used for a maximum of 108 hours a year, he said, about a 10 percent increase over previous years. The Navy is not permitted -- per regulations through the National Marine Fisheries Service -- to kill any marine mammals, he said. When challenged on that issue, Mosier said that 13 incidences of injury to whales are expected each year, while 99 percent of the effects of sonar would disturb their behavior. When Navy lookouts spot whales within 1,000 yards of a ship using sonar, the sonar is required to be powered down, and if whales come within 200 yards, it must be turned off immediately. But several people in the audience said that the Navy should avoid the use of sonar altogether during the migrations of humpback and gray whales along the West Coast, and not operate in marine reserves and sanctuaries. Former Arcata City Councilman Dave Meserve asked what would happen if the Navy found that it had killed a whale using sonar -- would it stop using it altogether? ”When does the preservation of life become a part of national security?” he asked. Speakers also began to question whether their concerns would amount to anything, as the project has already been approved by the assistant secretary of the Navy. Mosier said that there are adaptive management elements of the plan that could potentially be influenced by public concerns but that the Navy personnel at the meeting were not the ones making decisions. When Beth Werner of Humboldt Baykeeper urged people to continue writing to Thompson, one man said the Navy was there as a red herring and didn't intend to change anything. That man even asked the Navy panel what would happen if the crowd were to detain them there nonviolently. Ali Freedlund with the Mattole Restoration Council said that there needs to be a much closer look at the Navy operations' effects on other marine life like salmon, which have declined in numbers in recent decades. ”You are jeopardizing everybody's fish by doing what you're doing,” Freedlund said.
