The deeper story that isn’t clear from the headline is that the Navy is destroying a marsh and restoring an estuary. Why? To put in a fence and a parking lot. All this without environmental review, or protections. The fence and parking lot are costing us, the taxpayers, almost $52 Million dollars. We are grateful for the crumbs of $100 million in total for *mitigation* money from the Navy to the Hood Canal Coordinating Council for the *total* mitigation of the new sub base work. This is just a fence a parking lot…does that sound out of whack to you?
Could you or I, or even the State of Washington for that matter destroy a marsh like that in this day and age? No. This is what we mean when we talk about the issues of militarization of the Sound and Hood Canal. We get no say in how our money is being spent on issues that compromise our local environment. We are grateful that someone in the Navy has even thought to trade off recreation of the estuary.
The larger issue of whether this new sub base expansion is even needed is never debated. When we question Norm Dicks long held support of the military, and the Navy in particular, this is the kind of thing that he, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell should, as our representatives, be seriously questioning. To be clear, we support our military, but with a budget in WA DC that will be forcing a $50 Billion cut to the military, (as reported on NPR just this AM) because of the inability of both political parties to come to the table and get things done, whether in this day of a crashed economy we even need a larger military base for our subs is not on the table for discussion by the population that supports them with their taxes. The reality is that over 40% of our taxes directly go to the military (perhaps much more if the nature of the ‘black budgets’ of the our top secret security wings were made public). There is a lot that could be done for the taxpayers with even 10% of that returned to jobs programs with environmental overview. Not security fences and parking lots that are of a highly questionable need.
Navy (re)turning lake to estuary on Bangor
Kitsap Sun
By Ed Friedrich The Navy is restoring a Hood Canal estuary that was blocked by farmers even before the creation of the Bangor submarine base. Cattail Lake was created when a road dammed Cattail creek. (MEEGAN M. REID/ KITSAP SUN) BANGOR —
BANGOR — The Navy is restoring an estuary that hasn’t held saltwater in more than 60 years. The $2.2 million project compensates for environmental damage from the building of a huge, new security fence.
Read more: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2012/mar/17/navy-returning-lake-to-estuary-on-bangor/#ixzz1pU0MwbcA
See all stories on this topic:
Like this:
Like Loading...
Filed under: Government | Tagged: Hood Canal, Navy, wetlands | Comments Off on Navy (re)turning lake to estuary on Bangor
Navy Returning Lake to Estuary on Bangor Base – Kitsap Sun
