A judge in Thurston County Superior Court is going to hear arguments April 1 on a lawsuit filed by a Whidbey Island environmental watchdog group over the Navy’s planned clandestine training at 22 waterfront state parks.
Whidbey Environmental Action Network, commonly known as WEAN, filed a petition for judicial review against Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission in March 2021. Not In Our Parks, a nonprofit group of concerned citizens and 20 affiliated coalition members, is supporting WEAN in its lawsuit.
More than 8,000 public comments have been received by parks with about 90 percent opposed to the plan, according to WEAN.
“It is unfortunate that the State Parks Commission failed to listen to the thousands of voices opposing the Navy training permit. Their action left us no choice but to seek judicial review,” said Steve Erickson, WEAN’s litigation coordinator.
The commission, in a 4-3 vote in January 2021, directed staff to proceed with permitting the Navy’s plans for state parks, though no permits have been issued yet.
The Navy is proposing to conduct “small-unit, intermediate and advanced cold-water maritime and land-based training activities for naval special operations personnel on selected nearshore lands in the inland waters of Puget Sound, Hood Canal and the southwestern Washington coast,” according to the State Parks and Recreation Commission’s response brief.
The proposed training in Puget Sound parks is a small part of the overall training program but offers “new terrain that is unfamiliar to trainees and also offers terrain that includes diverse shorelines.”
A Navy spokesperson previously pointed out that the “extreme tidal changes, multi-variant currents, low visibility, complex underwater terrain and rigorous land terrain” is valuable for special operations training.
WEAN’s petition cites several grounds for review, including that military training isn’t one of the uses allowed in parks under state law, that a valid environmental study wasn’t completed and the “creep factor” of having hidden Navy personnel watching parks visitors would prevent people from enjoying the park.
The State Parks Commission’s reply brief counters that WEAN is wrong in its arguments. It states that military training is an allowed use of state parks and that the required elements of the SEPA review were completed.
There is a disagreement over the “creep factor.”
While a Navy official previously said the purpose of the training is for Navy personnel to train among the public without being seen, the brief points out that the state’s mitigated determination of non-significance states that “surveillance of members of the public is prohibited.” The brief states that the permit does not allow for training during daytime or when the public is present.
WEAN argues that the permit allows plainclothes naval personnel to circulate among the public and surreptitiously observe park users so that the naval personnel “may intervene in the event of imminent detection of a trainee.”
“If secret military personnel observing, monitoring the movements of, and interacting with unsuspecting park users is not ‘in any way’ surveillance, what is?” WEAN asks in a brief. “Military forces secretly observing members of the public are surveilling them.”
The public can attend the hearing either in person or remotely via Zoom. Sign up is available at the time of the hearing – passcode 1234, Meeting ID: 84634089705 at www.thurstoncountywa.gov.
