Despite our best efforts…the military continues to turn our area into a training ground. Expanded sonar testing. Expanded jet flights. Increasing base forces. They get the National Marine Fisheries Service to buy into their assumptions on ‘no net loss’. They expand an antiquated air field that should be shut down and moved to a more remote area. They conduct sonar tests in the same waters as our last remaining Orcas. Folks, they will never really work to protect our environment. Now we get a Federal Government that will give them carte blanche to continue to expand. And where is Representative Derek Kilmer, Senator Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell in all this? Silent.
The U.S. Navy has finalized a plan to expand sonar testing and other warfare training off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and northern California. The Navy decided to implement its preferred plan after a lengthy review that included a determination from the National Marine Fisheries Service that the exercises would not have major impacts on endangered orcas and other marine mammals. It announced its decision on Nov. 4. The fisheries service last year renewed the Navy’s five-year permit, through 2020, to conduct the activities in areas from the inland waters of Puget Sound in Washington state to the northern coast of California. Phuong Le reports. (Associated Press)
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