Navy can use sonar despite environmental fight

Navy can use sonar despite environmental fight

By Paul Elias - The Associated Press

Posted : Friday Aug 31, 2007 18:04:17 EDT

SAN FRANCISCO — The Navy can use high-power sonar during exercises off the Southern California coast, despite the technology’s threat to whales and other marine mammals, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

National security interests outweigh the possible harm to marine life, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined in overturning a judge’s order banning the practice.

“The public does indeed have a very considerable interest in preserving our natural environment and especially relatively scarce whales,” Judge Andrew Kleinfeld wrote for the majority. “But it also has an interest in national defense. We are currently engaged in war, in two countries.”

Judge Milan Smith Jr. disagreed, saying he would have kept the ban in place in part because the Natural Resources Defense Council is likely to win its lawsuit to stop the use of sonar.

The ruling allows the Navy to use the high-power sonar in 11 planned training exercises.

Cara Horowitz, an attorney for the Santa Monica-based resources defense council, said she was “somewhat disappointed” by the ruling Friday, but remained confident the lawsuit would quickly succeed in shutting down the sonar program off the Southern California coast.

The appeals court said in its Friday ruling that it wanted to resolve the lawsuit quickly and Horowitz was hopeful that the Navy will be able to undertake most of the 11 planned exercises. She said the next planned exercise is in September.

The council’s lawsuit alleges that the Navy’s sonar causes whales to beach themselves among other environmental harms.

The Navy maintains it already minimizes risks to marine life. It has monitored the ocean off Southern California for the 40 years it has employed sonar without seeing any whale injuries.

A Department of Justice attorney didn’t return a telephone call Friday.

Navy officials, who had asked the court to overturn the district court’s verdict, were pleased.

Adm. Robert Willard, who commands the U.S. Pacific Fleet, had noted that the initial injunction “left us in an untenable position of having strike groups needing this training and not being able to accomplish it.”

The appellate court’s ruling allows the Navy to resume use of the active sonar — which service officials contend is needed to help detect modern diesel-electric submarines that could pose national security threats — for training, especially within its vast ranges off Southern California.

“The ability to detect and track potentially hostile submarines is a critical skill that cannot be duplicated in the classroom or by simulation,” a Pacific Fleet spokesman, Capt. Scott Gureck, said in a statement.

“Today’s ruling allows us to resume active sonar training for our carrier and expeditionary strike groups,” Gureck said. “These integrated sonar training exercises are absolutely essential for our strike groups to conduct before they deploy to the Western Pacific, the Middle East and around the world.”

Staff writer Gidget Fuentes contributed to this report.

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