The battle against Navy jet noise continues here on Whidbey Island, but for once there may be some improvement on the horizon, thanks to the State AG Bob Ferguson taking on the Navy. Until now the Navy could dismiss jet noise opponents opposition as a nuisance, and a nuisance they could choose to ignore being the 800 lb. gorilla on our island.
When the Navy was working on their EIS, I and hundreds of people attended the Navy’s meetings where they presented their plans, and collected public comments that they planned to minimize and ignore. I’ve been living with the intense jet noise for the last 29 years, as they flew over my neighborhood at treetop altitude. Over the past two years I have suffered significant hearing loss.
Restore the balance between Navy’s needs and civilian communities impacted by Growler jets
Aug. 11, 2022
By Anne Harvey
Special to The TimesCoupeville, the primary Growler training location, once a sparsely populated farming area neighbored by a military base, is now a growing community inundated by jet noise. In 2019, the Navy planned to quadruple the number of Growler takeoffs or landings to 100,000 operations per year by 2022, according to the state Attorney General’s Office. For years, residents across the region have reported negative health impacts including cardiac and mental health issues, stress and hearing loss, in addition to economic hardship, loss of tourism and challenges for children.
Just days before Seafair, federal Judge Richard Jones ruled that the Navy violated federal law in its Environmental Impact Study (EIS) of expanded Growler jet operations. There were four issues cited, including failure to quantify noise impacts on classroom learning and not investigating alternative Growler sites.
This ruling was in response to lawsuits filed by state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, Paula Spina and Citizens of Ebey’s Reserve (COER), a nonprofit member group of the Sound Defense Alliance, affirming the need for a solution to the jet noise issue.
The Sound Defense Alliance (SDA) has been working across Northwest Washington to develop the “Roadmap to a Remedy.”
We seek to address this issue in a way that restores the balance between military needs and civilian communities.
We call on the Navy, the federal administration and all elected officials to:
- Keep Naval Air Station Whidbey Island open with an emphasis on leveraging Washington’s exceptional track record for innovation and environmental protection in partnership with the base leadership.
- Return Growler flight operations to the Pre-Record of Decision levels and relocate the 36 Growlers additionally called for in 2019.
- Conduct a new EIS that truly evaluates the Growlers’ impact on Northwest Washington. This would require assessing siting alternatives for Growlers and environmental, health, economic and cultural impacts.
- Update the 1998 Department of Defense Growler Siting study, which recommended against siting the jets in Northwest Washington and determine a more suitable training location where the military mission is not harmful to rural communities, Olympic National Park and Peninsula, and the Salish Sea.
These F-18 training flights also impact the San Juan Islands and Olympic National Park with increased jet noise.
Judge rebukes Navy’s Growler EIS
“The Navy appears to have used certain statistics ‘much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.’”
With these words, Chief United States Magistrate Judge J. Richard Creatura leveled a scathing rebuke of parts of the Navy’s Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) on the expansion of EA-18G Growler aircraft operations at the Naval Air Station Whidbey Island.
Under NEPA and the APA, the Navy’s decision may be overturned if the Navy acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” and failed to take a “hard look” at the consequences of the proposed action.
The judge wrote that “despite a gargantuan administrative record, covering nearly 200,000 pages of studies, reports, comments, and the like, the Navy selected methods of evaluating the data that supported its goal of increasing Growler operations. The Navy did this at the expense of the public and the environment, turning a blind eye to data that would not support this intended result.”
In particular, the judge found that the FEIS: failed to disclose that greenhouse gas emissions above 3,000 feet were omitted from its calculations (as if the CO2 up there doesn’t matter in global warming) and pointed to vast discrepancies between fuel burn assumed in the FEIS versus real-world data on Growler jet fuel consumption from NASWI’s own fuel depot; failed in its evaluation of the extent to which increased operations would harm children’s learning; concluded that certain bird species were not adversely affected and then extrapolated that all the other bird species would not be affected; and provided an “arbitrary and capricious” dismissal of the alternative of moving Growler operations to El Centro, California.
The Navy cited high cost as the basis for a cursory rejection of moving operations instead of providing a detailed objective evaluation of alternative sites. The required alternatives analysis could lead to moving the Growler facility somewhere else.
My diary from 2018 when the Navy’s expansion plans were announced.
The Navy plans to ruin one of most stunningly beautiful spots in the US: Central Whidbey Island