[blind-democracy] Washington State, Olympic Peninsula: 'Unlawful and Fatally Flawed': U.S. Navy to Conduct Dangerous War Games Over National Forest

  • From: "S. Kashdan" <skashdan@xxxxxxx>
  • To: "Blind Democracy List" <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2015 07:12:02 -0800

'Unlawful and Fatally Flawed': U.S. Navy to Conduct Dangerous War Games Over
National Forest



By Dahr Jamail [1]



Truthout [2], October 30, 2015



http://www.alternet.org/print/environment/did-us-navy-break-federal-laws-push-war-games-over-national-forests



3The U.S. Navy aims to begin conducting electromagnetic warfare training
across much of Washington State's Olympic Peninsula soon.



Meanwhile, it is being accused of breaking federal laws in order to secure
the permits necessary to move forward with its training operations.



Karen Sullivan worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for 15 and a
half years, and is an expert in the bureaucratic procedures the Navy is
supposed to be following.



She is now part of the West Coast Action Alliance [3], one of two large
multistate and international citizen groups who have tasked themselves with
watchdogging the Navy, due to what they believe are ongoing violations of
the law, blatant acts of disrespect toward human and environmental health,
and ongoing bellicose behavior by the military branch in their areas.



"Ethical and legal questions about the Navy's conduct abound: hidden
notices, comment periods that have been shortened or wholly eliminated, and
last-minute publication of key documents coupled with total disregard for
NEPA's [National Environmental Policy Act] prohibitions on segmentation
present a clear and present danger that the Navy is hastily proceeding with
plans regardless and in defiance of federally mandated processes,"
Sullivan's organization wrote [4] recently in a memorandum to the Navy.



RELATED: Over 180,000 Marine Mammals May Die in Navy's Arctic War Games [5]



Some of the points of concern about the Navy's actions include: failure to
provide reasonable notice to the public about their planned war games,
failure to provide adequate comment process, failure to address functionally
connected activities and their cumulative impacts, and failure to adequately
consider impacts to Olympic National Park's World Heritage designation,
among others.



Sullivan, who worked for over 15 years in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service's Division of Endangered Species and External Affairs, told Truthout
she believes the Navy's final environmental impact statement [6] (EIS) about
their upcoming warfare training is "unlawful and fatally flawed."



"The Navy has an astonishing sense of entitlement to public lands and
waters," Sullivan said about how the Navy has approached the public's
concerns over its operations. "Northwest Training and testing range manager
Kent Mathes told me last year after a public meeting, 'We own the airspace
and there's nothing anyone can do about it.'"



As Truthout previously reported [7], if it gets its way, the Navy would be
flying Growler jets--electronic attack aircraft that specialize in radar
jamming--in 2,900 training exercises over wilderness, communities and cities
across the Olympic Peninsula for 260 days per year, with exercises lasting
up to 16 hours per day. Naval surface fleet ships will also be participating
by homing in on ground-based emitters - a topic that was never discussed in
the Navy's environmental assessment.



Dozens of naval EA-18G Growler supersonic jet warplanes will fly as low as
1,200 feet above the ground in some areas in order to conduct war games with
14 mobile towers on the ground in national forests. Medical doctors,
scientific reports and even the Navy's own documents show [8] that enough
electromagnetic radiation will be emitted to be capable of damaging human
eye tissue, causing breast cancer, causing childhood leukemia and damaging
human fetuses, let alone impacting wildlife in the area. The Navy has denied
that these impacts will occur.



Medical doctors also told Truthout [9] that noise from the Navy's jets is a
major health risk.



A U.S. Navy Growler jet flies over Ridgecrest, California (image: Cmdr. Ian
C. Anderson/USN/Wikipedia [10])



Nevertheless, the Navy appears to be rapidly moving forward with its plans
to war game over the Olympic Peninsula. In doing so, Sullivan believes it is
opening itself up to major lawsuits - because it is taking blatantly illegal
actions.



Fatal Flaws



John Mosher, the Navy's northwest environmental manager for the U.S. Pacific
Fleet, has stated [11] that its planes will be flying as low as 1,200 feet
above the ground.



Yet the Navy's environmental impact assessment [12] does not even mention
jet noise pollution or the sound of the Navy's jets, and states that there
are "no significant impacts" on public health and safety, biological
resources, noise, air quality or visual resources.



Tens of thousands of outraged residents from around the Olympic Peninsula
have expressed their opposition via letters to the U.S. Forest Service [13],
public meetings, letters to the editor in newspapers across the peninsula,
flooding article comment sections [14] and via social media.



"Olympic Forest Coalition is extremely concerned with all aspects of the
Navy's proposal, but of primary concern is for the disruption to wildlife
activities in both the national park, the forest and our coast. Endangered
species such as the marbled murrelet are at a 5 percent population decline
due to loss of habitat and other disruptions," Connie Gallant, president of
the Olympic Forest Coalition, which co-authored the recent memorandum to the
Navy, told Truthout. "The Olympic Coast Marine Sanctuary area is also in
peril due to the many 'takes' the Navy plans. It is as if our entire
ecosystem has been targeted for destruction and, so far, the Navy is showing
very little concern for it."



But apparently the Navy is not having any of it: It has simply ignored or
neglected to address residents' outcries about its actions.



The October 13 memorandum sent to the Navy by the West Coast Action Alliance
states [4], "Reasonable concerns and objections presented by the public and
allied organizations continue to be utterly disregarded, and this
controversy intensifies by the day."



Even some politicians have become concerned about the Navy's negligence; in
fact, Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Washington State) requested that the Navy
undertake a sound study under the auspices of the Federal Interagency
Committee on Aviation Noise (FICAN). But according to Sullivan's group, "The
Navy failed to do so. Instead it reconstituted an older study using data
from Prowler jets, which are no longer being flown, to justify no
significant impacts on the soundscapes of Olympic National Park."



Sullivan explained to Truthout that the Navy's EIS is "fatally flawed" for a
number of reasons. One of the requirements of the law is for the Navy to
give the public reasonable time to read and comment on their proposed
operations, before the review period ends.



"Notices in local papers did not appear until five to seven days into the
30-day 'review' period, and as of October 10 only one individual we knew of
had received the copy as requested, with more than one-third of the allotted
30 days already past," Sullivan explained. "Libraries in northern California
have still not received their copies as of October 20. The public review
period ends November 2, and the documents are more than 4,000 pages long."



This was just one of several examples of how, according to West Coast Action
Alliance, the Navy has been in violation of the law.



"The bottom line is the Navy doesn't care how we feel about it and they
don't want to hear from us," Sullivan said. "If they did, there'd be a real
person manning the jet noise complaint hotline, and there'd be a way to get
information from them in a timely manner, and there'd be a way for the
public to be heard on the record. Their message to communities on the
Olympic Peninsula is: Go away. Your comments don't count."



Sullivan is far from alone in feeling this way. Even naval veterans are
troubled by the Navy's current behavior.



"I'm one of them, and always will be," Navy and Vietnam veteran Patrick
Noonan told Truthout. "I'm deeply committed to what it is the Navy has to
do. Given that, they need to learn to be better neighbors rather than worse
neighbors to the surroundings and the cities they fly over."



Noonan, who was also a naval test pilot, added, "They are going in the wrong
direction. They are becoming worse neighbors and becoming more belligerent.
These people just want the Navy to be more considerate."



Other "fatal flaws" in the Navy's final EIS, Sullivan told Truthout, include
"segmenting connected actions into smaller pieces that get evaluated
separately. What this means is nobody gets to evaluate the totality of
effects, or what agencies would call cumulative impacts."



Another issue she takes with the Navy's EIS is that it fails to consider the
impacts to the soundscape of Olympic National Park, which is a World
Heritage site.



"They did not conduct a 'neutral' study on the effects of jet noise after
being specifically requested to do so last May by Congressman Derek Kilmer,"
Sullivan said. "The Navy ignored Congressman Kilmer's request and
reconstituted an old study using data from aircraft that are no longer being
flown."



She went on to point out how the Growlers are notably more powerful and far
louder than the Prowlers, the aforementioned aircraft the Navy used in the
reconstituted study. Her data came from calculations performed by Noonan,
the former Navy test pilot.



"The new airplane is dramatically louder than even that monster F4 I used to
fly," Noonan said.



As Truthout has previously reported [9], doctors have shown that the intense
jet noise from the Navy's warplanes causes our bodies to go into functions
that cause hypertension, increased triglycerides, lack of sleep, anxiety,
lack of enough REM and other negative impacts. Several medical studies also
show that the higher the decibels and the longer the hours, the higher
potential for increased myocardial infarction, hypertension, anxiety and
other issues.



Possible Lawsuits



The Navy has left itself open to being sued on many fronts. Sullivan said
the Navy failed to provide adequate public notice nor provide libraries the
Navy listed with their EIS in hard copy or CD format for the public to read.



"They also violated NEPA by pre-selecting an alternative long before making
anything public," Sullivan said. "The Navy applied for an incidental take
permit [permit allowing the Navy to kill certain numbers of wildlife] from
NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] last April, long
before this EIS was finalized, yet they still have not announced their
preferred alternative, so what this means is they have already selected it,
applied for the permit and the public's comments don't matter a bit with
regard to their final choice. That's illegal."



This leaves the Navy potentially vulnerable to Endangered Species Act and
National Historic Preservation Act violations. The types of violations in
which the Navy has engaged, according to Sullivan, are not simply routine
blunders.



"The release of the EIS before consultation is complete is unprecedented,"
Sullivan said. "To sign a record of decision before consultations are
complete, while not strictly illegal, is unethical. Basically, it would
amount to making up one's mind before knowing what the impacts are."



Black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) on Olympic National Park
Cape Alava Trail (image: Miguel Vieira/Flickr [15])



The U.S. Forest Service has to grant the Navy the permit it needs to use
national forest roads for driving its mobile emitters for the war games. The
Forest Service has said it will issue its decision in November, but many
activists involved in the situation believe the Forest Service is poised to
rubber-stamp the Navy's permit, despite thousands of formal public comments
made in opposition to naval plans.



Consequently, Sullivan said, the Forest Service has also now left itself
open to lawsuits.



"This could leave them [Forest Service] vulnerable on many fronts," she
said. "For example, they did not conduct their own scientific investigations
to validate the Navy's claims of no significant impacts."



She believes there are "egregious" factual errors in the Navy's
environmental assessment, yet the Forest Service has nonetheless indicated
it may adopt it wholesale anyhow.



"This violates the National Forest Management Act, among other laws, which
basically prohibits them from accepting scientific conclusions from other
agencies without verifying them," Sullivan explained. "The fact that they
received 4,000 comments from the public, all but 31 opposed, and that they
are prepared to ignore that as well as the laws they've violated, makes them
vulnerable."



Resistance



Gene Marx is a former Navy pilot who flew as an airborne electronic warfare
officer in Vietnam. Nowadays, he lives in Bellingham, and is publicly
critical of the Navy's plans for the Olympic Peninsula.



"They will be flying over the Olympic Peninsula without restriction to
altitude or speed; this will without a doubt have major negative
consequences on the environment," Marx told Truthout. "The Navy isn't
telling you a thing about what the overflights will be doing to the
environment--so if we look at the noise impact, that alone will have a major
impact on the peninsula."



Marx called the Growler aircraft the Navy is using "a killing machine and a
jamming machine," and does not believe the Navy is doing anything in the
best interests of the environment. "They are being disingenuous telling us
they will be stewards of the environment and that they will not impact the
peninsula with their training," he added. "That is just crazy."



Sullivan agrees.



"We have the right and the duty to oversee the actions of federal agencies,
including the military, and to insist that they follow the law and their own
policies," she said. "We have the right to be heard on the official record,
a right that is currently being denied. It is not unpatriotic to insist on
these rights, and to demand that our government follow the law and its own
policies."



And similar to Marx, she is extremely disappointed by the Navy's actions, on
a personal level.



"Not that many years ago I used to feel a sense of pride whenever a Navy
ship would pass by," she said. "Being a mariner, I used to dip the ensign,
or lower my boat's American flag, to them in salute, and they always
returned the salute. I used to be proud when they'd pass by."



But her experience today has changed her sentiment.



"Now it feels like they have nothing but contempt for their neighbors," she
said. "The public is being left out of too many major decisions by our
government, and that's wrong."



Noonan believes one immediate solution would be for the Navy to use already
existing training ranges, instead of "going to pristine lands and imposing
their noise on them."



"They have the Yakima range, which gets very little air use," he explained.
"That range is vast and totally available to them, and it's eight minutes
[flying] from Whidbey. I'm frustrated by the Navy's method and how
inconsiderate they are being of the environment when they don't have to be.
I don't understand that."



Sullivan is acutely aware of how the deck is stacked against the public when
it comes to standing up against any arm of the US military.



"The Navy has teams of lawyers, and we citizens have only our powers of
observation and freedom of speech," she said. "However, we have the right
and the obligation to speak out as informed citizens, across the country,
wherever unwarranted encroachment into public and private land is happening,
and it's happening in a lot of places."



In other words, she intends to fight.



"We are not giving up," Sullivan said. "We will make them follow the law."



Copyright, Truthout.org [16]. Reprinted with permission.



Keep up to date with important environment news; sign up [17] to receive
AlterNet's weekly environment newsletter.



Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the author of The Will to Resist:
Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books, 2009,
and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in
Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from Iraq for more
than a year, as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last
ten years, and has won the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative
Journalism, among other awards.



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mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on 'Unlawful and Fatally
Flawed': U.S. Navy to Conduct Dangerous War Games Over National Forest [18]



[19]



Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/environment/did-us-navy-break-federal-laws-push-war-games-over-national-forests



Links:



[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/dahr-jamail



[2] http://www.truthout.org



[3] http://westcoastactionalliance.org/



[4]
http://westcoastactionalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/WCAA-OFCO_Memorandum_ABSOLUTE-FINAL.pdf



[5]
http://www.alternet.org/environment/over-180000-marine-mammals-may-die-navys-arctic-war-games



[6] http://www.cnic.navy.mil/regions/cnrnw.html



[7]
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27339-navy-plans-electromagnetic-war-games-over-national-park-and-forest-in-washington-state



[8]
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/28009-documents-show-navy-s-electromagnetic-warfare-training-would-harm-humans-and-wildlife



[9]
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/32045-sounds-of-war-navy-warplanes-producing-deadly-noise-around-us-bases



[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_EA-18G_Growler#/media/File:EA-18G_VX-31_over_Ridgecrest_CA_2009.jpg



[11] http://vimeo.com/110384630



[12]
http://a123.g.akamai.net/7/123/11558/abc123/forestservic.download.akamai.com/11558/www/nepa/97011_FSPLT3_2346870.pdf



[13]
https://cara.ecosystem-management.org/Public/ReadingRoom?List-size=25&amp;project=42759&amp;List-page=1



[14]
http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20140926/NEWS/309269975/0/SEARCH



[15]
https://www.flickr.com/photos/miguelvieira/4825725920/in/photolist-8mr7c3-3aasE-8m849P-8m851H-7seDXE-ffz3jv-8mxiGs-fF7Bbx-4nGSBm-8mnYi2-d52ow5-3aazs-7Nedzc-QEsNd-29puKs-gHkW2N-nqokXi-nqojFa-eKfKhf-fBRb4t-ptvrKf-yk9vhz-aiHwCW-29XKBS-kaNtvM-2jifHM-8pdbwW-5Q5xLy-ffz3uH-nEQ7Vs-nn6ao8-9pRJ5x-acAN4y-d1ZiRb-ay84q6-fBR9kv-fC6qzW-nk3q6R-cPAuRy-fBRaHD-2jPqUz-4nCNRZ-aeCJib-7jMj5R-7ZvVYV-dhhka6-dhhjXc-dhhkuy-oDBUa6-4WDTyY



[16]
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33387-us-navy-allegedly-broke-federal-laws-to-push-forward-electromagnetic-war-training-over-national-forests



[17] http://www.alternet.org/subscribe-environment



[18] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on &#039;Unlawful and
Fatally Flawed&#039;: U.S. Navy to Conduct Dangerous War Games Over National
Forest



[19] http://www.alternet.org/



[20] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B






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