Navy weapons testing update
By FRANK HARTZELL Of The Mendocino Beacon
Updated: 04/02/2009 08:03:37 AM PDT
Northern California can expect about 20 annual hours of Navy weapons training in the ocean, virtually all of it 12 miles or more offshore, under a controversial new plan for weapons training in the ocean.
That's about the same amount of training that has been going on in recent years off the Golden State, said U.S Navy spokesman John Mosher, who, with the help of others in Washington, D.C., provided responses to questions about the U.S. Navy Northwest Training Range Complex Draft Environmental Impact Statement posed by the newspaper.
The EIS documents impacts on the ocean of sonar, undersea weapons testing, and the use of submarines, ships, boats, missiles and aircraft.
The amount of training in the ocean would more than double under the Navy's preferred alternative, the response states. But that entire increase will be focused on the complex of naval bases in Washington's Puget Sound, with no effort to increase testing off Northern California.
Navy officials clarified that the southern boundary of the Navy Northwest Training Range Complex is the Humboldt-Mendocino County line, meaning there will be none off the Mendocino Coast. That fact is stated in terms familiar to those who read nautical maps, not in layman's terms.
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