Earthwatch
Striking A Balance: The Coastal Zone Management Act At Risk
by Andrea Verdin
The ocean is home to millions of animals and plants, and we love them all. We want to keep them and their homes safe so that animals like the dolphin, the whale, and countless others will be there for our children and their children. But what if, in keeping our own lives and homes safe, we are destroying the lives of our marine friends? What if, in the process of training our military and keeping our borders secure, we are eliminating the chances of having our descendents see the precious animals that we love so much?
The Navy uses a high-intensity, mid-frequency sonar during training exercises, and while this is necessary to further military knowledge and ability, the Navy has acknowledged that sonar can also injure and kill whales and other marine mammals and can cause problems like fatal strandings, decompression sickness and disruption of normal activities such as mating and foraging.
In order to protect marine life along the U.S. coast, the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA) was put into place in 1972. According to the Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management website, the CZMA was enacted not only to take care of the growth of the coast, but also to ensure the well-being of marine life.
On January 15, President Bush issued a waiver under the CZMA that would have allowed the Navy, under ‘emergency’ stipulations of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), to use sonar during training closer to the coast of Southern California. The President’s memo said this use would be “in the paramount interest of the United States... [and]
essential to national security.”
Those who care about marine life and the coast have not taken this action sitting down. The Natural Resource Defense Council—a national nonprofit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists—joined together with the International Fund for Animal Welfare, Cetacean Society International, the League for Coastal Protection, and many other environmental groups, to fight the waiver. And on February 4, U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper struck down the waiver, calling it unlawful.
“The Navy’s current ‘emergency’ is simply a creature of its own making,” says Cooper, “i.e., its failure to prepare adequate environmental documentation in a timely fashion.” He added that the Navy “produces the absurd result of permitting agencies to avoid their NEPA obligations by re-characterizing ordinary, planned activities as ‘emergencies’ in the interests of national security, economic stability, or other long-term policy goals... This cannot be consistent with Congressional intent.”
Upholding the Act reaffirms its requirement for the Navy to maintain a twelve nautical mile ‘no-sonar’ buffer zone along the California coastline; to avoid other key whale habitats; to shut down sonar when marine mammals are spotted within 2,000 meters of operations and to monitor for marine mammals using various methods, among other measures.
While this is a step in the right direction, according to Cara Horowitz, a staff attorney with NRDC, the battle is far from over.
Says Horowitz: “It’s certainly not the end of the issue by any means. It’s a tough issue because the military does need to train with sonar and we’ve never questioned [that need]. But there’s also no question that this technology harms marine life.”
What can we do to protect the environment and at the same time allow the government to continue to train?
“The Navy doesn’t need to harm whales to train effectively with sonar. By following the carefully crafted measures ordered by the court, the Navy can conduct its exercises without imperiling marine mammals,” said Joel Reynolds, Director of the Marine Mammal Protection Project at NRDC, in a recent press release.
Horowitz agrees. She is confident that there can be a way for the Navy to train and still not harm the marine life around them.
“We have been pushing for solutions that require the Navy to plan very carefully when it trains with sonar,” says Horowitz. “For example, they can choose locations where marine mammals are less likely to be, or [select] times of the year that avoid migration routes, and implement a whole series of cautious measures to reduce harm to [them]. That’s not to say that harm is eliminated entirely, but if the Navy is as careful as it can be, it can still be consistent with its training objective.”
For now, the Act that’s protecting marine life on the Southern California coasts is calling for us to stand up for all of our coastlines. While the CZMA protects the immediate coast, there needs to be more surveillance where and when military training presence exists.
“The safety zone around sonar ships where the Navy trains has been dramatically increased, especially if they see whales within that safety zone,” said Horowitz. “These are the types of solutions that we think work, but the key now is to ensure that those measures are implemented, not just in Southern California, but also in other places where the Navy trains.”
For more information on the NRDC and the sonar/marine life campaign, check out nrdc.org. Andrea Verdin is a San Diego native who enjoys watching the sunset and looks forward to learning how to play the bass and surf this summer.