By CAROL VAN STRUM
As we have reported this week, the Navy has made a proposal to use the Pacific Northwest coastline as a target practice range, and has embarked on a suspiciously under-publicized public review process that was scarcely advertised and as anticipated, largely unnoticed.В Now it seems as through the US Navy isn’t the only agency involved in making what amounts to be a furtive land grab off the Pacific Northwest coast. Joining in what appears to be a territorial struggle between two large federal agencies, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is making a play to establish their own distinguishing and environmentally-questionable mark on the area. В
In a classic case of one hand not knowing what the other is doing, the FERC has issued a preliminary permit for installation of 200 to 400 wave energy buoys off the coast of Newport, Oregon. The buoys would be placed within the area designated by the US Navy for bombing and gunnery practice, experimental weapons testing, sonar experiments, unmanned drone aircraft tests, undersea minefield exercises and other explosive activities. FERC’s permit has stirred up “a hornet’s nest” both in southern Oregon, where residents of Coos Bay expected the installations to be placed, and in Newport, where fishermen as well as the county district attorney complained of being left out of the loop in the decision.
According to The Coos Bay World, the permit “also calls into question FERC’s intentions of adhering to a memorandum of understanding previously negotiated with Oregon to give the state greater siting power over wave energy projects in the territorial sea.”
Both FERC and the US Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service, The Coos Bay World notes, “have claimed the area outside of Oregon’s territorial sea, beyond three nautical miles.” During the last year, while FERC, the US Department of the Interior, coastal fishermen and the state of Oregon quibbled over control of coastal waters, the US Navy quietly slipped under the radar and planted its own flag -– backed with the best weapons our tax money can buy.
The Navy’s Northwest Range Complex Environmental Impact Statement [EIS] makes abundantly clear that the Navy’s bombing range plans trump all other claims.