By Tacoma News Tribune via McClatchy News Service and Peninsula Daily News staff
By Tacoma News Tribune via McClatchy News Service and Peninsula Daily News staff
JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD — Army commanders broke federal law when they let new-arriving helicopter crews fly regular routes over nearby civilian communities in 2012 as part of a buildup of helicopter forces at this huge base south of Tacoma.
They failed to follow requirements to reach out to the base’s civilian neighbors and study the full impacts of the noisy after-hours training.
In a lengthy investigative report published this week by The News Tribune newspaper in Tacoma in the wake of an unannounced low-flying Army helicopter exercise in the Port Angeles area July 11-12, the base’s leaders said their actions were inadvertent.
It took a flood of public complaints from civilian residents near Lewis-McChord and consultation with attorneys before they realized they had violated federal environmental laws.
“We found out after [that] we were wrong,” said 7th Infantry Division Deputy Cmdr. Col. William Gayler.
The commanders acknowledge they were rushing to plan safe training routes ahead of a major expansion of the base’s airpower — about 40 choppers added to a fleet of about 100, capping eight years during which the base’s helicopter strength has nearly tripled.
They made the mistake at a time when helicopter safety was in the spotlight after a December 2011 crash on the base killed four Army aviators.
To make flying safer for crews, Army leaders authorized off-base routes in the summer and fall of 2012.
In so doing, they jeopardized relations with civilian residents in the Lewis-McChord area who, like Port Angeles residents in July, weren’t consulted about flight patterns over their homes.
Documents obtained by The News Tribune show that some officials knew that the base’s neighbors should have been contacted beforehand.
Inexplicably, it never happened.
Environmental study, public hearings
Lewis-McChord has since gone back to the drawing board.
It’s working on a full environmental impact study on permanent off-base routes.
The study will be available to the public this fall, and officers promise a robust public process, including open hearings.
But some neighbors remain frustrated by helicopters flying too low, too late, too loud and too often.
Training exercises have continued on nonstandard routes that do not require environmental studies.
“One of the really difficult things of this was our complete loss of faith in the military here,” said Izeekiel Lundsten, a Lacey resident of 19 years.
She told of day and night military helicopters flyovers, often continuing as late as 2 a.m., saying, “You almost feel like you’re under attack.”
“We support our bases,” she said. “But it was such a feeling of helplessness. It was such a feeling of being invaded.”
When the Army announced in March 2011 that Lewis-McChord would be the new home for the 16th Combat Aviation Brigade, it compelled the biggest changes in at least two decades in how helicopters maneuver in and out of the base’s air space.
As aviation brigade headquarters prepared to move from Alaska, its leaders pushed for safety measures.
“If we can’t get a handle on this by the time the [new helicopters arrive in 2012], there’s a high chance of an aviation accident,” Col. Robert Dickerson, then-top aviation officer, was quoted as saying at a planning meeting Dec. 2, 2011.
Meeting minutes were included among hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The News Tribune through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Dickerson’s words proved prophetic. Nine days later, two small Kiowa helicopters crashed in an aviation training area near Lacey, killing four pilots.
The crash happened well before the Army got a chance to implement the safety improvements that Dickerson’s team wanted.
It was a tragic coincidence.
The Kiowas had been stationed at Lewis-McChord for several years. They went down five months before the first new helicopter would land at Lewis-McChord.
But base officials acknowledge it “sped up” adoption of new flight operation rules, known in military shorthand as 95-1 for the specific section in Army regulations.
The safety measures include creating off-base helicopter routes to ease pressure on Lewis-McChord airspace, which is crowded with other military aircraft.
Residents weren’t told
Affected residents were given no notice about the changes — and no opportunity to comment on them.
Only after residents flooded the installation with complaints last summer did commanders learn from base lawyers that an Army study they thought covered off-base routes actually did not sanction them.
“The noise complaints coming in here forced us to look at what we were doing and . . . that’s when the legal guys came back and said, ‘You know, this is not kosher,’” Col. H. Charles Hodges Jr., Lewis-McChord’s garrison commander, told The News Tribune.
Hodges started the job as the noise complaints reached their peak in the summer of 2012.
Breaking the law was unintentional, officers say, born of confusion over the authority of a 2011 environmental review that looked at the impacts of bringing the aviation brigade to Lewis-McChord, now the West Coast’s largest military base.
“We thought we were covered,” said Robert Rodriguez, the base’s top civilian aviation officer.
“And when we dug into it deeper, we realized we weren’t.”
During the first part of 2013, the base got noise complaints from residents living in Lacey, Steilacoom and on Anderson Island.
Aviators were flying in preparation for the arrival of new Apaches and Black Hawks, and they had to make contact with beacons placed at various airports.
They weren’t flying standard routes, so the Army did not notify the communities.
The military is not required to produce an environmental study for those flights any more than a civilian pilot would for a onetime trip to a civilian airport.
Base officials said helicopter traffic has tapered off and won’t return to that level now that pilots have completed the assignment.
Even so, mistrust lingers among residents who didn’t see the helicopters coming and still are startled by them.
U.S. Rep. Denny Heck, D-Olympia, said that his office has fielded complaints from residents about the helicopter noise over the past few months.
City managers in Lacey and Olympia heard from a few residents, too, earlier this year.
“While some level of noise pollution is a fact of life when living near a large military installation, I believe Joint Base Lewis-McChord can do a better job when possible to proactively communicate information about training flights to the general public,” Heck said.
Flights over Peninsula
The Army gave no prior notice to civilians before Army helicopters from Lewis-McChord — four Chinooks supported by several Black Hawk attack choppers — flew late-night training exercises over Port Angeles homes in July.
The training exercises by pilots of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment ran from about 10:30 p.m. July 11 to about 2 a.m. July 12.
The Coast Guard station in Port Angeles, used for takeoffs and landings, was notified, but the exercises surprised local law enforcement and the public.
Port Angeles Mayor Cherie Kidd, saying the visitation “terrorized my city,” spoke with Hodges at the base in Tacoma.
At Kidd’s suggestion, Hodges attended a Port Angeles City Council meeting to apologize and assure local residents that prior notification would be provided in the future.
Things went better later in the month when two CH-47 Chinook helicopters landed at night at Jefferson County International Airport just south of Port Townsend to practice refueling procedures.
It was a much smaller exercise than the Port Angeles mission, and it didn’t take the choppers over Port Townsend.
Port of Port Townsend Executive Director Larry Crockett received word from Lewis-McChord two days ahead of time.
He notified Jefferson County Administrator Philip Morley, City Manager David Timmons and Jefferson County Sheriff Tony Hernandez.
There was no contact by Lewis-McChord with the news media.
But the Peninsula Daily News was notified by county officials, and the upcoming exercises were publicized on the PDN’s front page.
Authorities said they heard no complaints from residents.
These training exercises happen at the airport every year or so, Crockett said, and he has always been alerted by the Army.
Maj. Emily Potter, Army Special Operations Aviation Command spokeswoman, said the exercises on the North Olympic Peninsula allow aviators to train in unfamiliar environments not too far from the base.
Better communication
Steilacoom Mayor Ron Lucas said he would like more advance notice so town officials could alert residents of significant training exercises.
Base officials say giving advance warning is difficult because many factors, primarily weather, can change flight plans in short order.
But Joe Piek, a Fort Lewis-McChord spokesman, told The News Tribune that the base’s public affairs office is working with aviation units to better inform communities in advance.
“That not only alleviates the complaints, but it also alleviates a lot of curiosity because people will know what to expect,” Piek said.
