EDITOR’S NOTE — A KOMO-TV (Seattle TV channel 4) 2-minute video on the hearing, “Raucous protesters shout down presentation on war games,” can be seen at https://vimeo.com/111189009
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PORT ANGELES — A raucous forum on a Navy aerial electronic warfare range project within and above Olympic National Forest drew opponents from Clallam and Jefferson counties who will be waiting until well into 2015 before they find out if their concerns have been answered.
Dean Millett, Pacific District ranger for the U.S. Forest Service, said Friday he will not make a draft decision on a special-use road permit required for the project until “pretty deep into 2015.”
Millett said the Forest Service has received about 1,700 comments on the proposal.
“We have to wade through all these comments and address them,” he said.
His draft decision will be followed by a 45-day objection period.
“We would try to work with the objectors and address their objections,” Millett said. “We’re going to be a long way into 2015 before we get to that point.”
The plan would establish an electromagnetic-radiation-based Navy warfare range that would include deployment of three camper-sized mobile emitters on 15 sites on remote Forest Service logging roads in Clallam, Jefferson and Grays Harbor counties.
A fourth emitter would be at a fixed site at the Navy base at Pacific Beach, and eight other emitter sites would be in north-central Washington.
Most of the comments that have been received are against the project — 90 percent of those he has seen, Millett said.
But he said most of them also are not “substantive.”
Millett explained that that means most of them don’t address specific points contained in a Navy environmental assessment that found no significant impact from the $11.5 million project.
Comments that are not substantive will not be considered.
It’s the same issue that Millett said arose during the Thursday night question-and-answer forum with Navy and Forest Service officials.
Commenters cannot simply say they are against the project, he said.
Rather, they must provide the agency with “any kind of useful data.”
The comments at Thursday’s forum were not recorded and will not be part of the official record, officials said at the beginning of the meeting.
That, too, incensed the crowd and set the tone for the next two hours.
No one among three dozen speakers, many of whom were from Port Townsend, spoke in favor of the project.
The forum was attended by more than 125 people, dozens of whom overflowed into the hallway outside the council chambers.
Carol Haffe of Port Townsend was among those sitting on the floor near Navy and Forest Service officials seated in City Council chairs.
She was one of 40 to 50 participants she said had traveled from Jefferson County to make their concerns known.
“We are all deeply concerned that the Forest Service is not doing its due diligence and [recognizing] environmental and safety concerns we all have about this frightening idea, this honestly frightening idea,” Haffe said in an interview.
The crowd hooted and hollered with distrust at repeated reassurances by John Mosher, U.S. Pacific Fleet Northwest environmental program manager, and Kent Mathes, Northwest Training Range Complex program manager, that enough safeguards would be in place to protect people and wildlife.
Some threatened to walk out of the meeting.
Almost every speaker prefaced their questions with statements of opposition to the project.
“What makes you think current findings are thorough, and what will you do to satisfy the safety requirements of the public?” asked one woman.
The trucks, equipped with antennas mounted 14 feet off the ground, would emit electromagnetic radiation as part of simulated targeting exercises performed by Whidbey Naval Air Station pilots trying to locate the emitters’ electronic signatures.
The purpose of the training is to practice denying the enemy “all possible frequencies of electromagnetic radiation (i.e., electromagnetic energy) for use in such applications as communication systems, navigation systems and defense related systems and components,” according to the Navy’s environmental assessment.
Aircraft would fly at 10,000 to 35,000 feet to locate signal sources.
“This is not a low-level flight-training operation,” Mosher said.
Mosher estimated there would be up to a 10 percent increase in flights.
Kent Mathes, U.S. Pacific Fleet northwest environmental program manager, said there are 1,200 flights in the Olympic Military Operations Area that includes the North Olympic Peninsula.
Aircraft noise was not considered as part of the environmental assessment, Mosher said.
That comment, too, prompted a boisterous reaction.
Mosher said the emitters would focus a beam upward, above the horizon, and not “in a 360-degree sweep emitting in all directions.”
A person who stood within 32 feet of the emitter’s path for more than 18 minutes could be hurt, he said.
But officials said that would not happen.
There will be a 101-foot perimeter around the camper-sized vehicles, which would be intermittently stationed in the remote areas.
“We have controls,” Mosher said.
“We are complying with industry standards and the Occupational Health and Safety Administration.”
Signals would be shut down if people or wildlife were in the area for an extended period of time, Mosher said.
“It would be physically impossible for someone to be in a position to be in a hazardous situation based on those injury standards for those emission sources,” Mosher said.
“We have used the best available science to address the hazards.”
A woman who spoke following Mosher’s reassurances was not convinced.
“If you let this grow, I will physically stop you,” she said.
Millett said at the forum that training exercises are allowed under an agreement between the Department of Agriculture, which has oversight of the Forest Service, and the Department of Defense — although electromagnetic radiation is not used now.
“This use is already taking place up here,” Millett said.
“This is not going to change that.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
