Navy vs. FERC: An Update from the Front Lines

Update: Thanks to news alerts and phone calls, the Driftwood Library in Lincoln City, Oregon has located the EIS and placed it in their reference section. This is an example of public records access. We’re all busy — but we need to take the time to seek and look at actual documents on issues that affect our communities. Over the years, my work with Carol, the author of our Oregon Firing Range series, involve learning how to collect and analyze documents. This whole series was based on Carol’s discovery of an EIS — an environmental impact statement, which is a public document. And voila, the truth comes out. — efc

by CAROL VAN STRUM

Last Thursday, Feb. 5, we reported on conflicting claims to Pacific coastal waters by the US Navy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, specifically citing FERC’s surprise permit for a 17-square-mile wave energy project off the coast of Newport, Oregon, smack in the middle of the Navy’s proposed target practice range.

Following that article, Friday, Feb. 6, was a red-letter day. The Oregon Congressional Delegation wrote Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter, demanding an extension of the comment period on Navy plans until April 11. While this is an important and welcome event, it is significant only if Secretary Winter agrees to the demands.

In this regard, a Congressional investigation of the Navy’s plans and its inadequate notice to the public may be paramount. Planet Waves learned that the notice provided by the Navy of its proposed plans and EIS was even worse than the Navy itself admitted. The Navy EIS asserts that its notice of availability of the EIS – and notice of public meetings — were placed in the (Lincoln City) News Guard, the only Oregon newspaper mentioned.

According to Allyson Longueira, the editor of the News Guard, however, “We didn’t find out about the (Jan. 30) meeting until it had already been held,” and only learned of it through a colleague who found reference to it online on Feb. 2. Furthermore, according to a Driftwood Library (Lincoln City) librarian, the only hard copy of the Navy EIS in the state was indeed sent to that library, but is to this date un-catalogued and unavailable to the public because it was sent undated, without any cover letter explaining its content or significance.

On Friday, two major impediments to FERC’s plans emerged. First, the legality of FERC’s permits for wave energy projects in Pacific coast waters was challenged by Fishermen Interested in Safe Hydrokinetics (FISH). The FISH Committee’s “Motion to develop comprehensive plan and to deny or hold in abeyance preliminary permit application for the Green Wave Mendocino Project” (the FERC project described in Planet Waves article “Navy Coup Update – Navy vs. Fed” ) asks that FERC develop a comprehensive plan for hydrokinetic energy development in the Pacific Ocean as required by the Federal Power Act, and that FERC delay or deny the Green Wave project until such a comprehensive plan is completed.

FERC, the FISH motion asserts, has been authorizing numerous hydrokinetic energy projects in the Pacific Ocean off California, Oregon, and Washington on an ad hoc basis without the comprehensive plan required by law. Such a plan would require FERC to 1) collect baseline environmental data and furnish it to the permittees; 2) include uniform study criteria and guidelines in preliminary permit articles; and 3) require permittees to conduct studies to provide data by which cumulative impacts of proposed projects can be assessed.

The FISH motion cites Ninth Circuit law holding that “the requirement for FERC to develop a comprehensive plan applies before the issuance of preliminary permits, and not just before licensing, if the ecological system is complex, and the proposed projects are numerous.”

As of Monday, Feb. 9, some 35 parties have intervened in support of the FISH motion, including the Sierra Club, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations and the County of Mendocino and the City of Fort Bragg.

Late last week, Finavera, a Canadian developer who was granted the first wave energy license from FERC for the much-touted Makah Bay project off the Washington coast, surrendered its license for the project “due to the current economic climate and the restrictions on capital necessary to continue development of this early-stage experimental Project.” This was to be FERC’s landmark project, “intended to demonstrate the economic and environmental benefits of wave energy conversion power plants near coastal communities.”

It appears FERC and the U.S. Navy have been demonstrably cavalier both in assuming power to decimate our coastal waters and spending large amounts of taxpayer money to do so with little or no oversight. Alerting our legislators to these developments and demanding accountability are imperative, particularly in our current economic crisis.