The following action alert was prepared by our intrepid researcher, editor and document hound, Carol Van Strum. It ran yesterday on Daily Kos as well.
By Carol Van Strum
The U.S. Navy two years ago persuaded legislators, the media, NOAA, and even environmental groups who should know better that Navy war games and testing of unidentified weapons, drone aircraft, sonar, and war ships over the entire Pacific Northwest coastline would have no significant effects on marine life or coastal residents.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the Navy now intends to increase all those activities, once again without identifying what they will be doing or where. Pacific coast residents this week received postcards from the U.S. Navy inviting the public to participate in the National Environmental Policy Act Process by attending “Open House Information Sessions” in remote, scarcely accessible towns in California, Oregon, Washington (State), and Alaska.
The Open House Information Sessions will be staffed by Navy representatives, a euphemism for private contractors who have no authority to answer questions presented by the public. As before, these “sessions” will be limited to a PR firm’s shiny posters and glossy brochures and a shiny, token staff who are instructed not to make any public presentation of the Navy’s proposed plans. The Navy will not allow formal oral comments or questions from the public at these sessions.