Pacific Coast Ocean Sanctuary
- by: The GREEN PARTY of Mendocino County
- recipient: PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
Oppose Washington DC's Three Pronged Assault on the Pacific Coast!
Under three separate programs hatched in Washington DC., the federal government intends to militarize and industrialize the entire Pacific coast of
America, from Seattle to San Diego. While these programs began during the era of Bush, they continue undiminished in the Obama administration. .
Each of these projects has its own government agency sponsor and environmental approval process. Unless president Obama modifies, postpones or cancels them, they will routinely go into effect on their particular pre-ordained timeline
The Green Party of Mendocino County (California) has published a petition to oppose all three of these projects and calls upon individuals, environmental groups and local Green bodies up and down the Pacific Coast to endorse, download and circulate our Pacific Coast Ocean Sanctuary Petition, and sign this online petition.
We need to raise a mighty chorus of popular outrage against the Triple
Federal Assault on our coast. Please see www.mendocinocountry.com for complete information. Download, print out and circulate the petition, and RSVP when you do!
**
Expansion of Naval Warfare Training:
First, the Navy is set to declare most of the Pacific Northwest from Cape Mendocino to the Puget Sound in Washington and east to Idaho a free fire zone for naval air, sea and undersea warfare training operations.
Much of the US Navy Department's naval and air fleet homeported in Washington is deployed in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea, on duty in the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Northwest Training Range Expansion would pre-emp the entire coasts of the states of Washington and Oregon and Northern California to the Humboldt-Mendocino county line along with most of Puget Sound and a series of "special use" air spaces off the coast and over land near the US Canada boundary east to Idaho.
Bullets, bombs, shells, rockets, missiles and depth charges will be fired into the air and waters of our coast for decades to come with deadly, permanent consequences to wildlife and ecosystem values.
Along with naval artillery, guided missile drones, and phosphorus munitions, midrange sonar will be employed, causing marine mammals to become disoriented and beach.
An Environmental Impact Statement on this project is available at www.nwtcomplexeis.com. The deadline for public comment has been extended to April 13, 2009.
*
Offshore Oil and Gas Leasing:
For the last three decades, the Mendocino and California Coast, Washington, Oregon and the Atlantic seaboard have been spared new offshore oil drilling by a simple paragraph in the House Interior Appropriations bill denying the Minerals Management Service funding for any lease sale planning in those areas.
But as a result of decisions taken by the national Demoocrat party leadership, the Omnibus spending bill covering the period until October 1
passed the House with no Outer Continental Shelf moratorium.
There are three oil and gas Lease Sales off California, one off Mendocino, and two in the Los Angeles area: one off Santa Barbara and
another off Oceanside.
The Interior secretary has extended public comment on a Minerals Management Service Five Year offshore oil and gas leasing plan begun
in the last days of the Bush administration until September 21. He will hold a meeting on the California Lease Sales on April 16 in San Francisco. See www.mms.gov/5-year
Oil drilling offshore the US has had long term chronic and occasionaly disastrous impacts on fishing, tourism and the environment. In terms
of domestic consumption, the estimated petroleum off Mendocino for example would provide only 17 weeks, but the damage to marine ecosystems is virtually permanent.
*
Wave Buoy Electricity:
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has granted wave energy preliminary pilot project permits off Fort Bragg, Mendocino, and Eureka as
well as Ventura County.
Recently, FERC has asserted jurisdiction over all waters including nearshore areas up to 3 miles out which are in state jurisdiction for OCS
activities.
This agency, which reports directly to the president, has adapted the process for licensing dams to licensing hydrokinetic arrays. The final
license can last from 30 to 50 years, and then be renewed.
In order to encourage rapid development of hydrokinetic technology, FERC has come up with a hydrokinetic pilot project preliminary permit process that can take as little as six months to be completed, lasts for 5 years and allows deployment and testing of experimental devices and their environmental impacts. Numerous conditions apply. This is a completely untested technology with unknown environmental risks.
See www.ferc.gov/industries/hydropower/indus-act/hydrokinetics.asp
The applicant must apply for a license within 2 years in the case of a pilot project preliminary permit or surrender its permit.
The pilot project permit may be near to shore as in the case in the PG&E pilot project off Fort Bragg, but it is intended to lead to arrays of hundreds tethered to the ocean floor by a complex system of cables and pulleys in deep water further out, with power cables strung along the bottom to shore.
A large scale deployment would deny the area to fishing. A typical wave buoy is as big as a railroad car. Onshore facilities similar to shipyards will be required to build and maintain them, as well as tie the output to the utility power grid.
**
Please note: For purposes of this online petition, any person (voter or otherwise) concerned about this issue can sign this petition.
Under three separate programs hatched in Washington DC., the federal government intends to militarize and industrialize the entire Pacific coast of
America, from Seattle to San Diego. While these programs began during the era of Bush, they continue undiminished in the Obama administration. .
Each of these projects has its own government agency sponsor and environmental approval process. Unless president Obama modifies, postpones or cancels them, they will routinely go into effect on their particular pre-ordained timeline
The Green Party of Mendocino County (California) has published a petition to oppose all three of these projects and calls upon individuals, environmental groups and local Green bodies up and down the Pacific Coast to endorse, download and circulate our Pacific Coast Ocean Sanctuary Petition, and sign this online petition.
We need to raise a mighty chorus of popular outrage against the Triple
Federal Assault on our coast. Please see www.mendocinocountry.com for complete information. Download, print out and circulate the petition, and RSVP when you do!
**
Expansion of Naval Warfare Training:
First, the Navy is set to declare most of the Pacific Northwest from Cape Mendocino to the Puget Sound in Washington and east to Idaho a free fire zone for naval air, sea and undersea warfare training operations.
Much of the US Navy Department's naval and air fleet homeported in Washington is deployed in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea, on duty in the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Northwest Training Range Expansion would pre-emp the entire coasts of the states of Washington and Oregon and Northern California to the Humboldt-Mendocino county line along with most of Puget Sound and a series of "special use" air spaces off the coast and over land near the US Canada boundary east to Idaho.
Bullets, bombs, shells, rockets, missiles and depth charges will be fired into the air and waters of our coast for decades to come with deadly, permanent consequences to wildlife and ecosystem values.
Along with naval artillery, guided missile drones, and phosphorus munitions, midrange sonar will be employed, causing marine mammals to become disoriented and beach.
An Environmental Impact Statement on this project is available at www.nwtcomplexeis.com. The deadline for public comment has been extended to April 13, 2009.
*
Offshore Oil and Gas Leasing:
For the last three decades, the Mendocino and California Coast, Washington, Oregon and the Atlantic seaboard have been spared new offshore oil drilling by a simple paragraph in the House Interior Appropriations bill denying the Minerals Management Service funding for any lease sale planning in those areas.
But as a result of decisions taken by the national Demoocrat party leadership, the Omnibus spending bill covering the period until October 1
passed the House with no Outer Continental Shelf moratorium.
There are three oil and gas Lease Sales off California, one off Mendocino, and two in the Los Angeles area: one off Santa Barbara and
another off Oceanside.
The Interior secretary has extended public comment on a Minerals Management Service Five Year offshore oil and gas leasing plan begun
in the last days of the Bush administration until September 21. He will hold a meeting on the California Lease Sales on April 16 in San Francisco. See www.mms.gov/5-year
Oil drilling offshore the US has had long term chronic and occasionaly disastrous impacts on fishing, tourism and the environment. In terms
of domestic consumption, the estimated petroleum off Mendocino for example would provide only 17 weeks, but the damage to marine ecosystems is virtually permanent.
*
Wave Buoy Electricity:
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has granted wave energy preliminary pilot project permits off Fort Bragg, Mendocino, and Eureka as
well as Ventura County.
Recently, FERC has asserted jurisdiction over all waters including nearshore areas up to 3 miles out which are in state jurisdiction for OCS
activities.
This agency, which reports directly to the president, has adapted the process for licensing dams to licensing hydrokinetic arrays. The final
license can last from 30 to 50 years, and then be renewed.
In order to encourage rapid development of hydrokinetic technology, FERC has come up with a hydrokinetic pilot project preliminary permit process that can take as little as six months to be completed, lasts for 5 years and allows deployment and testing of experimental devices and their environmental impacts. Numerous conditions apply. This is a completely untested technology with unknown environmental risks.
See www.ferc.gov/industries/hydropower/indus-act/hydrokinetics.asp
The applicant must apply for a license within 2 years in the case of a pilot project preliminary permit or surrender its permit.
The pilot project permit may be near to shore as in the case in the PG&E pilot project off Fort Bragg, but it is intended to lead to arrays of hundreds tethered to the ocean floor by a complex system of cables and pulleys in deep water further out, with power cables strung along the bottom to shore.
A large scale deployment would deny the area to fishing. A typical wave buoy is as big as a railroad car. Onshore facilities similar to shipyards will be required to build and maintain them, as well as tie the output to the utility power grid.
**
Please note: For purposes of this online petition, any person (voter or otherwise) concerned about this issue can sign this petition.
WHEREAS: THE WEST COAST OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA finds itself the target of a US Navy training range expansion, offshore oil and gas lease sales by the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission hydrokinetic energy pilot projects;
WHEREAS: the Northwest Training Range expansion would transform our peaceful coast into a warfighting asset, bringing the conflict in South
Central Asia into our front yard and cause significant and permanent disruption of fisheries and marine life, decimate our tourism economy and
ruin our quiet enjoyment of the ocean;
WHEREAS: oil and gas drilling on our outer continental shelf would create decades of acute environmental risk and permanent deterioration of
the quality and integrity of the marine environment for only a few weeks of national petroleum consumption;
WHEREAS: FERC has rushed into the business of granting hydrokinetic permits on a case by case basis with no regard for due process and
objective rulemaking, and the environmental impacts of wave buoy array deployment are unknown, and would require significant industrial
development onshore which is being ignored in its permitting process;
WHEREAS: The cumulative impact of these projects are not considered by any of these agencies and would militarize and industrialize our coast to a
vast extent in undesirable ways with which we profoundly disagree;
WHEREAS: We the people, our needs our feelings, our unique culture, economy and ecology are being ignored by the federal government in pursuing these projects;
WE, THE UNDERSIGNED WEST COAST VOTERS URGENTLY INSIST YOU POSTPONE ALL THESE PROJECTS indefinitely for further study as Bush 41 postponed OCS lease sales off California in 1989. FURTHER we ask you to work with Congress to promulgate OCEAN SANCTUARY legislation to permanently protect coastal areas off California, Oregon and Washington in order to preserve for posterity significant natural characteristics such as deep ocean upwellings which provide a large portion of the nutrients on which our fisheries and planet depend.
Sign PetitionSign PetitionWHEREAS: the Northwest Training Range expansion would transform our peaceful coast into a warfighting asset, bringing the conflict in South
Central Asia into our front yard and cause significant and permanent disruption of fisheries and marine life, decimate our tourism economy and
ruin our quiet enjoyment of the ocean;
WHEREAS: oil and gas drilling on our outer continental shelf would create decades of acute environmental risk and permanent deterioration of
the quality and integrity of the marine environment for only a few weeks of national petroleum consumption;
WHEREAS: FERC has rushed into the business of granting hydrokinetic permits on a case by case basis with no regard for due process and
objective rulemaking, and the environmental impacts of wave buoy array deployment are unknown, and would require significant industrial
development onshore which is being ignored in its permitting process;
WHEREAS: The cumulative impact of these projects are not considered by any of these agencies and would militarize and industrialize our coast to a
vast extent in undesirable ways with which we profoundly disagree;
WHEREAS: We the people, our needs our feelings, our unique culture, economy and ecology are being ignored by the federal government in pursuing these projects;
WE, THE UNDERSIGNED WEST COAST VOTERS URGENTLY INSIST YOU POSTPONE ALL THESE PROJECTS indefinitely for further study as Bush 41 postponed OCS lease sales off California in 1989. FURTHER we ask you to work with Congress to promulgate OCEAN SANCTUARY legislation to permanently protect coastal areas off California, Oregon and Washington in order to preserve for posterity significant natural characteristics such as deep ocean upwellings which provide a large portion of the nutrients on which our fisheries and planet depend.
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