TRUE COST
ADC's Rosalind Peterson said, "Each one of these five-years-testing programs is immense...and very costly. We, the tax-paying public, will pay to replace all the bombs, missiles, and other arsenal used for these live fire exercises; we will pay heavily for the environmental degradation of ocean, land, and air; we will pay very heavily for the collapse of the marine mammal, fish, and bird populations. We don't realize that one set of activities has a wide-ranging set of consequences."
The Navy Way
The NWTRC EIS Resource Section: Socioeconomics addresses cost from the point of view of how unobtrusive Navy testing will be and how little it will impact civilians and businesses.
It is important to note that there are no restricted areas in the NWTRC. Normal right of way for fishing boats and all other vessels is honored throughout the range complex. In fact, to prevent interference during the conduct of their activities, Navy ships and aircraft intentionally seek areas clear of all other vessel traffic for conducting their training.3
The Table of Annual Commercial Landed Catch and Value within Washington Waters (2007) carefully records every fish of economic significance over four dozen, from northern anchovy that, for example, generated $35,883 that year, to Dungeness Crab, $54,479,797, to Sockeye salmon, $89,802, even to "Unspecified bait shrimp", $219,648.
Then, "Due to the low level of Navy activities, and the lack of interaction between the Navy and commercial interests, there are no expected revenue losses in any offshore industry...."
Unsurprisingly, the EIS Socioeconomics segment concludes, "the Proposed Action would result in no significant impacts. Therefore, no mitigation measures are required."4
A Better Way
Those focused on one-dimensional "national security" in terms of military might makes right rather than a complex, multi-layered, integral system of living wonders that offer generative mysteries rather than threats can be assured that the Navy, and the other branches of the US military, already has enough of our planet to conduct testing. It has been doing it for decades. It does not need and should not have even more of our precious, already-stressed, and shrinking planet.
Nevertheless, after three years and thousands of comments received by people and groups in the Pacific Northwest, Marianne Edain of Washington's Whidbey Environmental Action Network (WEAN) perhaps it up, "I feel like a flea facing an elephant."
1) NWTRC EIS Hazardous Materials. Table 3.3-1: Number of Activities or Training Items Expended Annually All Alternatives. Footnote 2, page 3.3-6.
2) NWTRC EIS Hazardous Materials. Table 3.3-6: Selected Hazardous Materials Discharge Restrictions for Navy Vessels. Page 3.3-17.
3) NWTRC EIS Socioeconomics. Page 3.14-7.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
