The Navy has clearly and brazenly broken the law in its push to carry out undersea warfare exercises in Hawai`i.<\/p>\n
Without question, it violated the National Environmental Policy Act when it released the first environmental assessment for the exercises in 2007. The first time that document saw light of day was when it was in its final form, with no opportunity for public comment. Not surprisingly, the Navy gave itself the green light to move forward with the series of 12 exercises planned over the next two years. The first two occurred in April 2007. If there were any doubt as to its failure to comply with NEPA, the Navy scrubbed that out with a hastily prepared second EA \u2013 virtually identical to the first \u2013 that was floated for public comment some nine months later, after a lawsuit had been filed challenging the Navy\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n
\tWhile it could be argued that the Navy\u2019s second EA cured one problem, it did not quiet them all. NEPA also requires that agencies prepare full environmental impact statements whenever possible effects on the environment are uncertain or involve unique or unknown risks. As Judge David Ezra noted in his injunction against the Navy last February, \u201cIf ever a factual scenario satisfied this criteria, it is this one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tJust as surely, the Navy breached the Coastal Zone Management Act. Under that law, the Navy must inform the state of Hawai`i at least 90 days in advance of any activities that may affect coastal resources. It did not do so until August 2007, and even then, the Navy\u2019s so-called \u201cnegative determination\u201d \u2013 claiming that the exercises would have no effect \u2013 was erroneous. To quote Ezra again, \u201cThe Navy could not have accurately determined that there would be no reasonably foreseeable effects on coastal uses or resources if the information it relied on to make this determination\u201d \u2013 the environmental assessment \u2013 \u201cwas insufficient.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tA separate issue is whether the National Marine Fisheries Service violated the Endangered Species Act when it issued a flawed biological opinion that effectively blessed the Navy\u2019s Hawai`i exercises. That issue was not among the ones before Ezra when he issued the injunction last February, but it is coming up for argument this month. Based on the history of the biological opinion \u2013 NMFS at first dragged its feet, wanting the Navy to do an EIS rather than an EA, but then meekly succumbed to political pressure and gave the Navy exactly what it wanted \u2013 the prospects that NMFS can prevail on this charge look pretty slim.<\/p>\n
National Emergency?<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n
The Navy argues that the Hawai`i exercises are needed as a kind of refresher course for sailors who have already received training in the use of sonar to detect quiet enemy submarines. (The training, which occurs in waters off Southern California, is itself the subject of a lawsuit that will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court later this month.) If so, argue lawyers for the plaintiffs in the Hawai`i case, that suggests that the Navy has no compelling reason to undertake exercises without regard to the harm they may have on marine mammals.<\/p>\n
\tThe Navy, however, has argued that the exercises in Hawai`i are, if anything, more<\/i> important than those in California, and that the training must come as close as possible to simulating actual warfare, with little regard for the welfare of marine mammals. Indeed, the Navy has obtained from the Secretary of Commerce a National Defense Exemption under the Marine Mammal Protection Act to let it pursue its exercises in Hawai`i without concern for the niceties of that law.<\/p>\n
Judge Ezra bowed deeply to the Navy\u2019s claims, and while he issued an injunction based on the likelihood that the plaintiffs would prevail on the allegations of NEPA and CZMA violations, he allowed the exercises to go forward, albeit under conditions that afforded whales slightly more protections than the Navy had imposed upon itself.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, in the Ocean<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n
The battle in the courtroom should not obscure the real impact that Navy mid-frequency active sonar is having in the ocean. And not just in the ocean around Hawai`i, but globally.<\/p>\n
\tTo humans, unwanted noise \u2013 an unmuffled motorcycle roaring past a bedroom window at night; boomboxed trucks at stoplights whose thumping bass can be heard for blocks; the chirps of ten thousand coqui \u2013 is mostly a nuisance, although stress from long-term exposure can also harm one\u2019s health.<\/p>\n
\tTo whales, the noises emitted by Navy vessels conducting their undersea warfare exercises can be frightening, disruptive of their normal behavior, interfere with communication, and cause stress. Under certain conditions, whales can lose their hearing and even die from injuries caused by the pressure of the noise.<\/p>\n
\tLast month, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, a plaintiff in two of the California lawsuits concerning MFA sonar, released a report, \u201cOcean Noise: Turn it Down,\u201d noting that in some regions, the level of noise in the ocean is doubling each decade. \u201cOcean noise pollution is already driving some marine mammals from their breeding and feeding grounds,\u201d wrote IFAW president Fred O\u2019Regan in a foreword. \u201cWhile we have much more left to learn, leading marine scientists warn that in addition to losing their hearing from the worst of our largely uncontrolled ocean noise pollution, some marine mammals are already being killed by it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tAfter naval exercises involving MFA sonar led to mass strandings of beaked whales in the Canary Islands in 2002, the government of Spain outlawed military sonar exercises within 50 nautical miles of the islands\u2019 coastline, the IFAW report notes approvingly. Is it asking too much to think that Navy training also can be restricted in areas where deep-diving whales are unusually vulnerable?<\/p>\n
\tTo quote O\u2019Regan of IFAW once more: \u201cIt is time for the international community \u2026 to work together to take precautionary action now. Without such collective action, the relentless increase in ocean noise pollution may soon threaten marine mammals at population levels. What a terrible irony it would be if the ultimate effects of this \u2018invisible pollution\u2019 become obvious only once it was too late.\u201d<\/p>\n
Volume 19, Number 4 October 2008<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Navy has clearly and brazenly broken the law in its push to carry out undersea warfare exercises in Hawai`i. Without question, it violated the National Environmental Policy Act when it released the first environmental assessment for the exercises in … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,159],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","category-october-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}