QUILCENE — The Navy set up an outpost in the high school gym in Quilcene earlier this week to inform the public about a training activities proposal that includes working with sonar equipment.
Seventeen Navy staffers manned tables featuring a variety of topics, outnumbering the 10 residents who attended the Wednesday night meeting.
The Navy is taking public comments, which will be considered in a draft environmental impact statement, with written comments due by April 27.
The meeting, the only one being held on the North Olympic Peninsula, was in Quilcene because of its proximity to Dabob Bay, which has served as a testing facility for nearby naval installations for more than 50 years.
The 600-foot-deep Dabob Bay usually is open for recreational purposes, though testing and training programs can close the 6,287-acre area temporarily to non-military personnel.
The environmental impact study being drafted is an extension of one currently in place, said Navy spokeswoman Kimberly Kler, but that one will expire in summer 2015.
Its purpose is to support the Navy’s request for reauthorization of permits under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act.
But there are no changes being considered that would affect the public’s access to Dabob Bay, Kler said.
“It will be business as usual,” she said.
“Nothing’s changing what they do and how they do their testing,” she added.
On Feb. 27, the Navy filed in the Federal Register a notice of intent to assess the potential environmental impacts associated with the Northwest Training and Testing Study Area.
The area includes the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Puget Sound and the Behm canal in southeastern Alaska.
It also includes the Northwest Training Range Complex — an area roughly the size of California, about 126,000 nautical square miles — that stretches from the waters off Mendocino County in California to the Canadian border and includes the Olympic National Marine Sanctuary, as well as the Keyport Range Complex, which covers parts of Hood Canal.
The Navy also is proposing pier-side sonar testing at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Naval Base Kitsap at Bangor and Naval Station Everett.
Conservationists and Native American tribes filed suit in January over the expanded use of sonar in training exercises, saying the noise can harass and kill whales and other marine life.
The environmental law firm Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups filed the lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service, saying it should not have approved the Navy’s plan for such training.
The environmental impact study will take three years to complete and is expected to cost about $3.6 million spread over five fiscal years, said Navy spokeswoman Liane Nakahara.
The proposal is to test equipment to make sure it works, then turn it over to sailors who will be trained on its use.
This could include breaking in a new submersible craft or testing new iterations of sonar technology.
The craft in question may be doing surveillance, an application for which local waterways are especially appropriate, according to Mike Bass, who works at Naval Base Kitsap.
“Puget Sound has the right temperature and the right mix of fresh water and salinity that can simulate a lot of the areas where we will be working,” he said.
An important part of the training has to do with spotting and disabling mines, which often are placed in proximity to land.
The environmental impact has the most to do with the presence of marine animals in the test area, something that greatly influences the manner of testing and training, according to marine biologist Joy Lapseritis.
“Sound does have an effect on marine animals,” Lapseritis said.
“So we project the impact that it will have with amplitude and frequency, we build models and create scenarios based on all the available research to project what those impacts might be.”
Lapseritis said Dabob Bay contains harbor seals, harbor porpoises, sea lions and the occasional humpback whale.
“What happens in the operational Navy is different in training and testing than in wartime,” Lapseritis said.
“This is a balance,” she added.
“If human safety and national security are at risk, the Navy will protect those interests.”
The Quilcene meeting was the second of four scheduled for Washington state, following one in Oak Harbor on Tuesday and preceding visits to Silverdale on Thursday and Aberdeen today.
Public forums also are planned in Oregon, California and Alaska.
The Quilcene meeting was the only one on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Nakahara said the turnout was “disappointing at first, but then we were told that getting 10 people to a public meeting in Quilcene was a pretty good showing.”
People don’t have to attend the meetings to provide input.
A public comment period before the draft environmental impact statement is released will end April 27.
Written comments can be mailed to Naval Facilities Engineering Command Northwest, 1101 Tautog Circle, Silverdale, WA 98315-1100, Attn: Kimberly Kler.
Comments also can be submitted online at www.nwtteis.com or submitted in person at the open house information sessions.
Information is available at the website.
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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.