MAXIMUM ALERT: Oppose
Washington DC's Three Pronged Assault on the Pacific Coast!
Under three separate programs hatched in
Washington DC, the federal government intends to militarize and
industrialize
the entire Pacific coast of America, from Seattle to San Diego. While
these programs began during the era of Bush, they continue undiminished
in the Obama administration. .
Each of these projects has its own government agency
sponsor and environmental approval process. Unless president Obama
modifies, postpones or cancels them, they will routinely go into effect
on their particular pre-ordained timeline.
The Green Party of Mendocino County has published a
petition to oppose all three of these projects and calls upon
individuals, environmental groups and local Green bodies up and down
the Pacific Coast to endorse, download and circulate our Pacific Coast
Ocean Sanctuary Petition,
As Greens, we need to lead a mighty chorus of
popular outrage against the Triple Federal Assault on our coast.
Expansion of
Naval Warfare Training:
First, the Navy is set to declare most of the
Pacific Northwest from Cape Mendocino to the Puget Sound in Washington
and east to Idaho a free fire zone for naval air, sea and undersea
warfare training operations.
Much of the US Navy Department's naval and air fleet
homeported in Washington is deployed in the Persian Gulf and Arabian
Sea, on duty in the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Northwest Training Range Expansion would pre-emp
the entire coasts of the states of Washington and Oregon and Northern
California to the Humboldt-Mendocino county line along with most of
Puget Sound and a series of "special use" air spaces off the coast and
over land near the US Canada boundary east to Idaho.
Bullets, bombs, shells, rockets, missiles and depth
charges will be fired into the air and waters of our coast for decades
to come with deadly, permanent consequences to wildlife and ecosystem
values.
Along with naval artillery, guided missile drones,
and phosphorus munitions, midrange sonar will be employed, causing
marine mammals to become disoriented and beach.
An Environmental Impact Statement on this project is
available at www.nwtcomplexeis.com.
The deadline for public comment has been extended
to April 13, 2009.
Offshore
Oil and Gas Leasing
' For the last three decades, the Mendocino and
California Coast, Washington, Oregon and the Atlantic seaboard have
been spared new offshore oil drilling by a simple paragraph in the
House Interior Appropriations bill denying the Minerals Management
Service funding for any lease sale planning in those areas.
But as a result of decisions taken by the national
Demoocrat party leadership, the Omnibus spending bill covering the
period until October 1 passed the House with no Outer Continental Shelf
moratorium.
There are three oil and gas Lease Sales off
California, one off Mendocino, and two in the Los Angeles area: one off
Santa Barbara and another off Oceanside.
The Interior secretary has extended public
comment on a Minerals Management Service Five Year offshore oil and gas
leasing plan begun in the last days of the Bush administration until
September 21. He will hold a meeting on the California Lease Sales on
April 16 in San Francisco. See www.mms.gov/5-year
Oil drilling offshore the US has had long term
chronic and occasionaly disastrous impacts on fishing, tourism and the
environment. In terms of domestic consumption, the estimated petroleum
off Mendocino for example would provide only 17 weeks, but the damage
to marine ecosystems is virtually permanent.
Wave Buoy
Electricity
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has granted
wave energy preliminary pilot project permits off Fort Bragg,
Mendocino, and Eureka as well as Ventura County.
Recently, FERC has asserted jurisdiction over all
waters including nearshore areas up to 3 miles out which are in state
jurisdiction for OCS activities.
This agency, which reports directly to the
president, has adapted the process for licensing dams to licensing
hydrokinetic arrays. The final license can last from 30 to 50 years,
and then be renewed.
In order to encourage rapid development of
hydrokinetic technology, FERC has come up with a hydrokinetic pilot
project preliminary permit process that can take as little as six
months to be completed, lasts for 5 years and allows deployment and
testing of experimental devices and their environmental impacts.
Numerous conditions apply. This is a completely untested technology
with unknown environmental risks.
See www.ferc.gov/industries/hydropower/indus-act/hydrokinetics.asp
The applicant must apply for a license within 2
years in the case of a pilot project preliminary permit or surrender
its permit.
. The pilot project permit may be near to shore as
in the case in the PG&E pilot project off Fort Bragg, but it is
intended to lead to arrays of hundreds tethered to the ocean floor by a
complex system of cables and pulleys in deep water further out, with
power cables strung along the bottom to shore.
A large scale deployment would deny the area to
fishing.
A typical wave buoy is as big as a railroad car.
Onshore facilities similar to shipyards will be required to build and
maintain them, as well as tie the output to the utility power grid.
TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:
WHEREAS THE WEST COAST OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA finds
itself the target of a US Navy training range expansion, offshore oil
and gas lease sales by the Interior Department's Minerals Management
Service, and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission hydrokinetic energy
pilot projects;
WHEREAS the Northwest Training Range expansion would transform our
peaceful coast into a warfighting asset, bringing the conflict in South
Central Asia into our front yard and cause significant and permanent
disruption of fisheries and marine life, decimate our tourism economy
and ruin our quiet enjoyment of the ocean;
WHEREAS oil and gas drilling on our outer continental shelf would
create decades of acute environmental risk and permanent deterioration
of the quality and integrity of the marine environment for only a few
weeks of national petroleum consumption;
WHEREAS FERC has rushed into the business of granting hydrokinetic
permits on a case by case basis with no regard for due process and
objective rulemaking, and the environmental impacts of wave buoy array
deployment are unknown, and would require significant industrial
development onshore which is being ignored in its permitting process;
WHEREAS: The cumulative impact of these projects are not considered by
any of these agencies and would militarize and industrialize our coast
to a vast extent in undesirable ways with which we profoundly disagree;
WHEREAS: We the people, our needs our feelings, our unique culture,
economy and ecology are being ignored by the federal government in
pursuing these projects;
WE, THE UNDERSIGNED WEST COAST VOTERS URGENTLY INSIST YOU POSTPONE ALL
THESE PROJECTS indefinitely for further study as Bush 41 postponed OCS
lease sales off California in 1989.
FURTHER we ask you to work with Congress to promulgate OCEAN SANCTUARY
legislation to permanently protect coastal areas off California, Oregon
and Washington in order to preserve for posterity significant natural
characteristics such as deep ocean upwellings which provide a large
portion of the nutrients on which our fisheries and planet depend.
