Score one for the whales

It's not over until the Supremes rule on any appeal, but yesterday U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper became my new hero when she issued a ruling that ...

...severely limited the Navy's ability to use mid-frequency sonar on a training range off the Southern California coast, ruling that the loud sounds would harm whales and other marine mammals if not tightly controlled.(WaPo, Jan. 4)

As I wrote in the previous post, this could have far-reaching implications for the long-standing war of priorities between the national security hawks and environmental doves.

In particular, Cooper banned the use of the sonar within 12 nautical miles of the California coast, expanded from 1,100 yards to 2,200 yards the Navy's proposed "shut down" zone in which sonar must be turned off whenever a marine mammal is spotted, required monitoring for the presence of animals for one hour before exercises involving sonar begin, and required that two National Marine Fisheries Service-trained lookouts be posted for monitoring during exercises. The judge also forbade sonar use in the Catalina Basin, an area with many marine mammals.

....

Joel Reynolds, who argued the case for the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups, called the ruling "the most significant environmental mitigation that a federal court has ever ordered the U.S. Navy to adopt in its training with mid-frequency sonar."

So nice to start the year off the right note for a change. Let's hope the Navy gives up and agrees with live with the restrictions instead of taking their case for a noisier ocean back to the appeal courts.