QUILCENE — The Navy will host an open-house information session in Quilcene today on a proposal to expand training activities, including use of sonar.
The meeting will be from
5 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the Quilcene School District multipurpose room at 294715 U.S. Highway 101.
The Navy plans to host nine open-house sessions in Oregon, California, Alaska and Washington state. The Quilcene meeting is the only one on the North Olympic Peninsula.
The Navy is taking public comment, which will be considered in a draft environmental impact statement, with written comments due by April 27.
On Feb. 27, it filed in the Federal Register a notice of intent to assess the potential environmental impacts associated with training and testing in 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, the Navy said on its website at https://nwtteis.com/Home.aspx.
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 areas 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 Navy is reassessing the environmental analyses contained in two previous environmental impact statements and consolidating them into a single environmental planning document.
Being consolidated are the environmental impact studies for the Northwest Training Range Complex and Naval Sea Systems Command Undersea Warfare Center Keyport Range Complex Extension done in 2010.
The purpose of the new environmental impact statement is to support the Navy’s request for reauthorization of permits under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act.
For more information, see https://nwtteis.com/Home.aspx, where comments can be submitted online.
Written comments must be postmarked by April 27.
They can be mailed to Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Northwest, Attn: Kimberly Kler, NWTT Project Manager, 1101 Tautog Circle, Silverdale, WA 98315-1100.
Comments also can be submitted in person at the open-house information sessions.