Navy Plans for Training Facility Rankle Environmentalists

Give or take three months ago, we told you that the Navy is looking into building a training facility off the coast of Florida, and that environmentalists weren't thrilled about that idea, but not a whole lot of information had come to light at that point. But now, the New York Times' Green Inc. is filling in some of the details.

According to the Southern Environmental Law Center and some other organizations, Navy ships would be performing exercises and sonar tests in areas otherwise protected for fish — including snapper and grouper — and close to a calving area for North Atlantic right whales.

Hmmm. This sounds vaguely familiar. The Navy, naturally, thinks that this is a non-issue, because they've done some research into the effect they might have on whales.

Jene Nissen, a Navy acoustic policy manager...said sonar will have no impact on wildlife “a majority of the time,” and whatever effects there would be he characterized as “minor and temporary.” There would be no impeding of whale calving, he said, or of the care of whale calves. “Our analysis shows the impact will be insignificant,” Mr. Nissen said.

This all sounds exactly like what happened off the coast of Southern California, so I don't know how this will turn out differently–the Navy will do what it wants, and they'll have to spend money on another report to show that it's fine. Wonderful.