In response to pressure from Oregon residents and the state’s Congressional delegation, the Navy has agreed to extend the deadline for public review and comment on the Environmental Impact Study (EIS) for expansion of its Northwest Weapons Training Range Complex (NWTRC) along the Pacific NW coast.<\/p>\n
Planet Waves originally broke the story about the Navy’s plans two weeks ago Monday, and we have been following it since.<\/p>\n
However, instead of a 60-day extension for public comment requested by Oregon’s congressmen, the Navy proposed to extend the deadline by only 30 days to March 11, 2009.<\/p>\n
Last Friday, Feb. 13, 2009 Oregon’s congressional delegation sent a follow-up to its first letter to the Secretary of the Navy.<\/a> The delegation again reiterated sixty days was needed for public review, and called the Navy on a lie. The full text follows, and italics and boldface are alterations made by Planet Waves, they’re not from the original text.<\/p>\n February 13, 2008<\/p>\n The Honorable Donald C. Winter Dear Secretary Winter:<\/p>\n In our February 6 letter regarding the draft Environmental Impact Statement\/Overseas Environmental Impact Statement (EIS\/OEIS) for the U.S. Navy’s expanded use of the Northwest Training Range Complex (NWTRC) off the Oregon coast we asked you to extend the public comment period and hold additional public meetings in Oregon.<\/p>\n On February 10, several Navy representatives, including Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy Don Schregardus, gave our offices a briefing on the draft EIS\/OEIS and answered a number of questions. Unfortunately, it appears that some of those answers contained inaccurate or incomplete information.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n During the briefing, Mr. Schregardus asserted that it was impossible to extend the public comment period to April II because it would push back the date for the final EIS\/OEIS and thus violate a legal settlement with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n In the settlement agreement, which sets a schedule of environmental compliance for the Navy’s various ranges (including the NWTRC), the Navy “confirms its intent to adhere to its range-wide compliance schedule” and agrees to notify plaintiffs (NRDC and other environmental groups) if it’s going to miss that schedule. However, there are no penalties if the Navy falls behind schedule.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Our offices have since discovered that even before we sent our first letter, the NRDC had itself asked the Navy for a significant extension of the comment period<\/strong>. This settlement was intended to require the Navy to comply with environmental laws, including preparation of environmental impact statements for its training ranges and refusing to adopt effective mitigation measures.<\/em><\/p>\n Meaningful public comment is clearly part of this process, and to say that extending the comment period would violate the settlement is disingenuous at best. <\/strong><\/em>These issues and the issues raised in our first letter, compel us to again ask that you extend the public comment period to April II, 2009 and hold at least two additional public meetings in Oregon, including one in Tillamook County, to ensure that those who may be affected and wish to comment on the project may do so.<\/p>\n Sincerely,<\/p>\n Sen. Ron Wyden Today, the Navy issued a press statement in response:<\/p>\n COMMANDER, NAVY REGION NORTHWEST FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE<\/p>\n February 17, 2009 By Navy Region Northwest Public Affairs<\/p>\n SILVERDALE, Wash. \u0432\u0402\u201c The Navy is extending the public comment period for the Northwest Training Range Complex Environmental Impact Statement \/ Overseas Environmental Impact Statement (EIS\/OEIS) to March 11, 2009, to allow for additional public input. This special allowance within the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process was made due to public comments received.<\/p>\n This EIS\/OEIS examines the potential environmental effects of the Navy\u0432\u0402\u2122s proposal for future range management operations and activities. The Northwest Training Range Complex consists of numerous training areas in the Pacific Northwest.<\/p>\n The range complex extends westward in the Pacific Ocean — up to 250 nautical miles beyond the coast of Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. For more information on this project, and several ways to provide public comment by the newly extended deadline, please visit www.NWTRangeComplexEIS.com.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n At least for now, we appear to have a little more time to respond than we did last week. However, the EIS is over 1,000 pages long, there are myriad interests involved who all want to have a say and the Navy, as we have witnessed, is not comfortable with transparency at the moment. At this juncture, its important to continue support of Oregon’s congressmen to pressure the Navy to extend the deadline for the date they asked for: April 11.<\/p>\n Here again are numbers to call and e-mail addresses to write to:<\/p>\n Senator Ron Wyden (D- OR) (ph)202-224-5244 (fax)202-228-2717 http:\/\/wyden.senate.gov\/…<\/a><\/p>\n Senator Jeff Merkley (D- OR) (ph)202-224-3753 (fax)202-228-3997 http:\/\/merkley.senate.gov\/…<\/a><\/p>\n Representative David Wu (D – 01) (ph)202-225-0855 (fax)202-225-9497 http:\/\/www.house.gov\/…<\/a><\/p>\n Representative Earl Blumenauer (D – 03) (ph)202-225-4811 (fax)202-225-8941http:\/\/blumenauer.house.gov\/…<\/a><\/p>\n Representative Peter A. DeFazio (D – 04) (ph)202-225-6416 (fax)202-225-0032http:\/\/www.house.gov\/formdefazio\/con…<\/a><\/p>\n Representative Kurt Schrader (D – 05) (ph)202-225-5711 (fax)202-225-5699 https:\/\/forms.house.gov\/…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In response to pressure from Oregon residents and the state’s Congressional delegation, the Navy has agreed to extend the deadline for public review and comment on the Environmental Impact Study (EIS) for expansion of its Northwest Weapons Training Range Complex (NWTRC) along the Pacific NW coast. Planet Waves originally broke the story about the Navy’s … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1,583],"tags":[29,577,1066,1795,52,976,1059,1064,985,1065],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11421"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n Secretary of the Navy
\n 1000 Navy Pentagon
\n Washington, DC 20350-1000<\/p>\n
\n Rep. Earl Blumenauer
\n Sen. Jeff Merkley
\n Rep. Peter Defazio
\n Rep. Kurt Schrader
\nRep. David Wu<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n 1100 Hunley Rd., Silverdale, WA 98315-1100
\n Phone: (360) 396-4981 Fax: (360) 396-7217<\/p>\n
\n Public Comment Period Extended Again for Northwest Training Range Complex EIS\/OEIS<\/p>\n