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1/13/15

The U.S. Navy docks at the Wharfinger Building on Friday, Jan. 16 from 5-8 p.m. to present a supplemental environmental impact statement to their Northwest Testing and Training plan, circulated last spring.

Last time in port the crowd opposing them filled the Red Lion. It’s important to attend this meeting, as it is a rare opportunity to comment as a community on a critical geopolitical issue.

The Navy has been testing weapons offshore for decades.

In recent years they have been required to invite public comment. That the responses are almost universally negative explains the Navy’s preference for low-profile publicity.

For example, the Navy concocted a plan to install equipment on Octopus Mountain (Olympic Peninsula) which would operate Mobile Electronic Emitter Warfare Training systems mounted on vehicles throughout public lands on the Peninsula. Low-flying jets would cruise over the forests and obliterate the emissions, as practice for destroying enemy communications. The lasers employed are said to be powerful enough to “melt a human eye.”

Though the Navy claimed it had posted the plan in local papers, it escaped the notice of the mayor and all residents of the nearby town of Forks, as well as the Audubon Society, until it was too late to comment.

Wrote Christi Baron, Forks Forum editor, “Does the Navy and the USFS believe that ‘we’ the people that live in Forks are not worthy of knowing what is planned?”

For coastal towns, the question of Navy testing is especially poignant this month, since if you watch the ocean for three minutes you’re bound to see a few spouts of gray whales cavorting southwards in their breeding migration. The Navy itself has assumed millions of “takes” (destroyed or damaged animals) as a result of its continued exercises.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported on a lawsuit against the Navy, brought by the Conservation Council for Hawaii, Earthjustice and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Similar suits have been brought, none successfully. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 (Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council) that security trumps marine mammals. The current suit claims that Navy use of sonar violates limits on the levels officially permitted as safe for marine mammals, recognizing that marine mammals must die in order to protect American security. The issue, as the WSJ points out, is just how many should be saved.

The lawyer bringing this lawsuit deferentially states, “No one is suggesting that the Navy shouldn’t be allowed to do testing and training.” The question here, realistically narrow in terms of any expectations, is whether they need every inch of the ocean. The lawsuit meekly wants them to leave a few whales for our grandchildren. Meanwhile those grandchildren are watching horror shows such as “Interstellar,” set in a near future, where humans have made Earth unlivable and are forced to embark on a desperate search for another world in a hostile universe. This is the stuff of nightmares.

The monstrous nature of this security is never questioned.

For the U.S., the most dangerous nation in the world by near-unanimous acclaim (Israel does not agree), security means offense, not defense. In the name of that security, the U.S. spends more than three times their closest rival, China, and with 1,000 bases dominating the world, has destroyed entire countries, killed millions of people since 1990, made millions more refugees, and our armed forces have polluted the planet more than any other entity except a few whole nations, and helped to impoverish the country they claim to protect.

Today, because of our malignantly spreading national security, order is collapsing around the world. Any hope for restoration of peace is intimately connected to the survival of salmon, blue whales, gray whales, bees, polar bears, plankton and ourselves.

We can channel our despair into action by confronting the Navy at the Wharfinger. We are not alone. Right across Humboldt Bay a group of people, led by Veterans for Peace, is busy restoring the “Golden Rule,” the world-famous ketch which sailed out into U.S. Navy testing grounds in 1958 and stopped atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons for good. This group has announced they will be in San Diego in less than a year.

They still need donations, materials and volunteers to help them abolish war as an instrument of national policy.

What better, more luminous, more inspired champion to send forth (for a second time) against the Goliath of our own self-destruction?

Ellen Taylor resides in Petrolia.

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1/12/15



The U.S. Navy will be holding a public meeting in Eureka on Friday to address a supplement to its environmental review of a controversial five-year training and weapons testing program along the North Coast and parts of Alaska.



As occurred at a similar meeting last year, some are gearing up to challenge the training program because of its proposed effects on marine life.



“(The Navy) is agreeing that there is going to be some harm to marine life, but how do they know it’s going to be insignificant as they say time and time again?” former U.S. Department of Agriculture crop loss analyst and environmental activist Rosalind Peterson said. “Where is the proof? That’s where the public needs to question the Navy with regard to this.”



During the proposed training period — to last from 2015 to 2020 — Navy personnel will conduct exercises and test a variety of weapons and equipment such as sonar technology, electromagnetic devices and explosives off the coasts of Alaska, Oregon, Washington and Northern California reaching the northern tip of Humboldt County. 


The supplement to the training’s environmental impact statement now under public review updates the Navy’s anti-submarine sonobuoy exercise — floating buoys that emit sonar signals — due to a model upgrade. The document will be open to public comment until Feb. 2.

The old models, known as SSQ-110s, that were proposed for use in the older proposed version of the environmental document produce their acoustic signal by “a quick burst explosive charge ... which has potential to cause injury or mortality to marine life due to its explosive charge,” according to Navy experts’ responses forwarded to the Times-Standard by the Navy’s Northwest Region Public Affairs Office.

The new models, SSQ- 125s, will instead produce the sound electronically, which “will result in a decrease in potentially significant impacts to marine life,” according to the Navy responses.

The upgraded models will still come with impacts to marine life, including increasing the distance the acoustic signals will travel.

“The most likely behavioral effects will be a marine mammal hearing and moving away from the sonobuoy; no long term consequences are expected to result from that type of behavioral reaction,” the Navy response states.

Peterson said that the updated activities have added impacts to leatherback sea turtles listed under the Endangered Species Act, with the supplement stating that “entanglement from the use of fiber optic cables, guidance wires, and decelerator/ parachutes during training and testing activities may affect, but is not likely to adversely affect, ESA-listed leatherback turtles. Entanglement stressors would have no effect on leatherback turtle critical habitat.”

Peterson said that these sea turtles may make the fatal mistake of mistaking equipment for food.

“The leatherback turtle is known to forage on jellyfish,” she said in response to this section of the supplemental draft. “Decelerator parachutes may resemble jellyfish and they would mistake them for food.”

Peterson also stated that while the new sonobuoys may not explode, they still produce high enough frequencies that may greatly confuse them.

“When the sonar blasts out, well, they say the marine mammals will move out of the area,” she said. “The sonar is so powerful that it’s hard for them to tell where it’s coming from because it’s so powerful.”

Both Peterson and Environmental Protection Information Center conservation advocate Amber Shelton state that the Navy will use “visual sightings” from the top of their ships to determine whether any marine life is in the testing area before starting any training. With a proposed vessel escort training also proposed in the supplement, both Peterson and Shelton state that this along with the shipboard visual sighting practice will increase the likelihood of ship strikes on marine mammals such as whales as well as other organisms.

In a 2009 letter sent to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, then-1st District Congressman Mike Thompson stated that “the Navy has estimated shipboard visual monitoring for marine mammals — the most commonly employed sonar mitigation measure — to be effective only 9 percent of the time.”

Shelton said that the Navy does not need to do as much live sonar training.

“I feel they don’t need to use live sonar and live bombing and testing chemicals,” she said. “They could probably practice all of those thing with simulators. ... It seems like they should at least restrict it to one small area instead of all over our oceans and restrict it to an area that doesn’t have any known migration of marine mammals like grey whales.”

In order for the testing and training program environmental review to be approved, it must get authorization from a number of federal agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for the possible “take” of marine life.

“All estimated impacts to ESA-listed species are non-injury exposures,” the Navy response states. “The vast majority (over 99 percent) of all modeled exposures to marine mammals for the Navy’s training and testing in the northwest are estimated to be behavioral responses. ... The Navy is still seeking to renew existing authorizations that allow training and testing exercises which may potentially disturb or harass, or in very limited cases injure marine mammals. The Navy is not requesting authorization for any mortality of marine mammals ... .”

Peterson said that the authorization gives the Navy a pass when marine life is fatally injured.

“When they say ‘take,’ it sounds very benign,” she said.

Navy Northwest Region Public Affairs Specialist Liane Nakahara said that while the training program’s environmental impact statement draft was completed in 2010, “it’s going to be a little while” before the draft will be completed and reviewed.

IF YOU GO:

What: U.S. Navy Northwest Training and Testing Draft Environmental Impact Statement/Overseas Environmental Impact Statement Supplement public meeting

When: Friday, Jan. 16from 5-8p.m. Where: Eureka Public Marina, Wharfinger Building, Great Room, 1 Marina Way

Comments on the supplement can be submitted to the Navy online at http://nwtteis.com/

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City studies 2-pronged approach to getting people off the streets



12/17/14


Aaron West 


The Eureka City Council on Tuesday adopted new strategies to deal with an old problem when they voted to explore a combination of options aiming to address homelessness.



The council’s unanimous vote during its meeting will have city staff research how to go about starting a pilot program for a city-sanctioned, small structure encampment, as well as spend $21,000 on developing a Eurekaspecific plan that would explore what it would take to provide the homeless with temporary housing and rehabilitation services through a policy called rapid rehousing.



“There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this problem, and if we look at it in that regard we’re going to fall short,” said Council­woman Kim Bergel, who along with Natalie Arroyo was sworn in as a new council member early in Tuesday’s meeting. “I agree completely with rapid re-housing, and it’ll give (the homeless) opportunities to integrate into society. There needs to be education. The expectation that we’d put someone in a house after they’ve been homeless for 10 years — that doesn’t make sense to me. Counseling is where they’ll be successful. I’m open-minded to the (small structure encampments) and the tents, but we also need to create different opportunities.”

The small structure encampment idea, which was born from a work session discussion before the meeting, would see a city-sanctioned encampment of powerless, waterless structures called Tiny Houses made available to homeless people who want to live in them, although details surrounding the idea were thin, and the details surrounding the pilot program that the council proposed were thinner.

“We wanted to do a taste test,” Eureka Community Development Director Rob Holmlund said, referring to a list of potential sites for a sanctioned camp. “To see what it feels like, what it looks like.”

Holmlund presented 10 potential sites for the encampment, which he said could work for both the Tiny Houses as well as tents, which ran the gamut from bigger spaces like a northern section of the Bayshore Mall parking lot to more confined areas along the bay and the Eureka Corporation Yard near Costco.

“(The sites) are very preliminary and based on two parameters — is it large enough, and does the city own it,” Holmlund said.

During his presentation, Holmlund — using the Bayshore Mall site as an example — said that the cost of such a camp could run anywhere from $50,000 to $300,000. He acknowledged that like the sites themselves, the projected costs weren’t anywhere near finalized, and more research would be necessary.

“I could be way off,” he said.

One thing that was for certain was that the city doesn’t have the resources to run a sanctioned camp, and that a third-party agreement would be necessa ry, City Attorney Cindy Day-Wilson said.

For comparison, Holmlund pointed to several other cities, including Fresno, Seattle and Portland, Oregon, that have struck such agreements with the likes of churches, nonprofits and businesses.

“Since this would be operated by a third party, we need to think about the caliber of organization we want to work with,” Holmlund said, adding that the organization would come up with their own cost estimates.

The council’s direction to staff to research the plan would have them look into third parties willing to work with the city on such an encampment, as well as explore how long a pilot program might last and how big the encampment would be. “It’s not going to solve the whole problem, but it might give us a footing,” Councilwoman Linda Atkins said.

The the rapid re-housing part of the council’s direction would see the city looking into a program recommended to the city in an initial report developed last year by Focus Strategies, a national group dedicated to helping communities improve efforts to end homelessness by using local data to create programs.

The approach, which would combine temporary, free housing made available to the homeless with access to rehabilitative and mental services, aims to move homeless people from the streets to homes quickly.

While the city currently doesn’t have such a program, or even the housing infrastructure that it requires, the council’s direction will have staff spend the $21,000 it would take to find out how to create it.

“We’ve been studying an awful lot,” Atkins said, “and we need to do something.”

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Pre-meeting work session will present concerns

12/14/14

Eureka city staff on Tuesday will look for direction regarding the homeless encampments located inside city limits.

An open work session scheduled for 4:30 p.m., immediately before the city council meeting, will have city officials presenting various perspectives on homeless encampments in Eureka, as well as presenting ideas on what can be done. Then, during the meeting — after the council’s newest members have been sworn in — an action item will see council members voting on how staff should proceed.

“We want to get the issue in front of the council and describe the problem,” City Manager Greg Sparks said. “We’ve got a few options we’re looking at and we’ll see if there’s an interest from the council and get some direction for staff. It’s a brainstorming session.”

Sparks said the session will bring a few city officials in front of the council in order to present different departments’ takes on the issue. For instance, Eureka Parks and Recreation director Miles Slattery will discuss encampment cleanups, and Eureka police Chief Andrew Mills will weigh in on enforcement.

Sparks said the discussion will also look at different methods to address the issue.

“You’re not going to solve homelessness by enforcing your way out of it,” Sparks said. “It comes down to getting these people into housing and providing mental health and substance abuse services. The gamut runs from enforcement to positive solutions.”

Sparks stated that resources are thin and there are too many homeless people in the area to provide housing for everyone, so he said staff has been looking at intermediate solutions. Which is where Community Development Director Robert Wall will come in. Sparks said Wall will go over potential locations for a sanctioned camp that will give the homeless somewhere to go.

A sanctioned camp isn’t a done deal, Sparks said, but it is one possible route the city could take.

“We want to visit with the council about everything because we’re trying to determine what some interim steps could be,” he said. “With the size of our homeless population, getting all these people into housing — no one has that ability. But we want to make sure we’re thinking through this. At the end of the day, we only have so much for resources and we want to make sure we’re using those the best we can.”

Sparks said community concern and recent incidents, including an accidental shooting in November at the encampment near Del Norte Street, inspired the meeting, as well as concern that the city isn’t doing enough to help the homeless.

“We don’t view it as an end to the issue, but really as more of a start,” he said.

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