Welcome to Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, the Navy’s new target for Electromagnetic Warfare Training. Growler jets, the world’s loudest, will soon zoom overhead 8 to 16 hours a day, year-round, sometimes flying as low as treetop level. Indefinitely.
President Obama noted that putting military gear in the hands of local police “can sometimes gives people the feeling like there's an occupying force . . .”
What happens when the weapons are in the hands of the military itself – the military that’s supposed to protect and defend us? What happens when the Navy wants its way with four counties, five towns and the adjacent tribal lands?
Olympic National Park is both a UNESCO World Heritage Site and an International Biosphere Reserve. The Olympic National Forest encompasses five designated wilderness areas. The Olympic Peninsula’s rugged public beaches border the Olympic Coast Marine Sanctuary. Tribal lands affected include the Makah, Quileute, Klallam and Quinault.
National Park Service officials registered their opposition. The Washington State Department of Natural Resources refused to let the Navy use their lands.
Yet the Forest Service declared “No significant impact,” okaying the Navy’s requests to impact millions of acres of mountainous woodlands, forests and meadows under Forest Service “protection.”
Thousands of citizens’ complaints, 90-some percent opposing the plan, have overwhelmed the Forest Service with comments,; they’re hiring special contractors to reply to comments.
Trying out new weaponry means blasting this fragile ecological treasure trove with radar-jamming air-to-ground electromagnetic signals -- plus ground-to-air transmissions from towers and mobile transmitter units traversing remote forest roads.
Over the ocean, the Navy wants to ramp up their use of explosives and sonar and deploy surface-to-air gunnery, dropping unspecified kinds and quantities of ordnance –bombing in civilian-speak – where whales, endangered sea turtles and our region’s totemic orcas breed, feed and frolic. Such underwater explosions as well as sonar can spell death to endangered whales and marine mammals. The Navy plans include “taking” 11.7 million whales and other sea mammals over the next five years.
Everything the Navy jets fly over will be exposed to electromagnetic emissions, as well as the deafening noise and polluting exhaust that the Navy's Growlers are noted for. Olympic National Park itself has strict regulations that prohibit flying in summers when the threatened Marbled Murrelets are nesting.
No one knows how the radar emissions and the jets' jamming will affect people and wildlife. The Navy does admit that the jets' electromagnetic emissions will interrupt civilian communications, including cell phone 911 calls.
The fate of unsuspecting beachcombers, boaters, hikers and campers? The impact on small communities linked to a tourist industry that draws millions of nature-seeking visitors from around the world each year? Good questions -- with no answers forthcoming.
Under the banner of national defense, these exercises provide a classic example of destroying the very things the military is supposed to protect, preserve and defend.
The Navy has a complaint line for people bothered by the jets’ deafening roars; some residents report the Growlers buzzing their homes after they called to complain.
So far, residents have refused to be intimidated, hoping that public opposition will grow as more people learn about the threats to the beautiful peninsula at the left hand corner of the US map.
Videos of public meetings appear on Facebook and other social media sites. A federal government retiree posts every available document on a web page. On line petitions have garnered thousands of signatures.
Local resident Sallie Spirit Harrison begins a 200-plus mile walk around the Olympic Peninsula in June, bringing music, storytelling and her love of Olympic National Park to people along the way. Public interest law firms are watching the evolving situation. UNESCO has yet to weigh in.
Learn more:
Citizen opposition:
http://westcoastactionalliance.org/
http://protectolympicpeninsula.org/
http://www.sierraclub.org/...
http://www.savetheolympicpeninsula.org/
http://citizensofebeysreserve.com/
http://www.peacefulskies.org/
News stories:
Navy Plans Electromagnetic War Games Over National Park and Forest in Washington State
http://www.truth-out.org/...
Domestic Military Expansion Spreads Through the US, Ignites Dissent
http://www.truth-out.org/...
Documents Show Navy's Electromagnetic Warfare Training Would Harm Humans and Wildlife
http://www.truth-out.org/...
Navy Seeks to Practice Using Electromagnetic Radiation Weapons over US Soil
http://www.projectcensored.org/...
Navy Warfare Training: Coming to a forest near you
http://portocallpublishing.com/...
Petition:
http://petitions.moveon.org/...