Navy Moves Forward on Sonar Facility Despite Concerns About Whales

Navy Moves Forward on Sonar Facility Despite Concerns About Whales

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 23, 2005; Page A09

The Navy is moving ahead with plans to build a 500-square-mile sonar training range off the coast of North Carolina, officials said last week. The project has sparked fierce opposition from environmentalists, who say some of the world's most endangered whales and sea turtles pass through the area.

Planning for the $99 million range has been underway for almost 10 years, but environmental challenges and concern that the sound waves from sonar may harm protected marine mammals have held up the process. The Navy published its draft environmental impact statement Friday and plans to begin a series of public hearings on the proposal next month.
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But animal researchers and environmentalists have grown increasingly alarmed over the Navy's plans and the potentially damaging effects of active sonar -- which sends out very loud blasts of underwater sound.

Whales and other marine mammals have very sensitive hearing, and a growing body of research has shown that sonar can disorient and sometimes kill them. The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmentalist group, sued the Navy last week over its use of mid-frequency sonar, the type that would be deployed at the new sonar range. The group claimed that the sonar threatened endangered animals, in violation of several federal environmental laws.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/22/AR2005102201172.html?nav=rss_nation

of the Navy being able to play with their very expensive toys? My god, the Navy has to use these Submarines for SOMETHING other than under-sea cruise ship tours!
There is absolutely NO OTHER spot in the world where the Navy can play with these toys, right? It HAS to be right in that exact spot.
The freaking armed forces are allowed to bypass every environmental law on the books in the name of "national security" and they LOVE it. They get their jolly's off destroying marine life in lieu of destroying people. They wish they could bypass all of those pesky war-time laws as well so they could REALLY show everybody what their toys can do.
I'm getting very down on the military lately, the money we spend on this crap is obscene. Year after year the Pentagon's budget expands. They have no apparent accounting system so much of it is wasted or used for clandestine operations that Congress is not aware of. They a budgetary black hole, swallowing every dime that has the misfortune of coming anywhere near it.
Our country has certainly made the choice between "guns or butter" and butter is coming out on the losing end every time. Our country falls apart, but we have a damned fine military with all the latest toys that will never be put to use.
See, you had to go and get me started at 6:30 AM , didn't you? ;) :rant:

Would be the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico - which is devoid of life anyway. At it's biggest it's over 7000 square miles.