Guest Editorial: If You Tell A Lie Often Enough, Does It Becomes The Truth?

Encroachment in the form of new land development near Naval Air Stations is rightfully resisted by Navy authorities. Those who knowingly build or buy a home within noise areas and then complain about the din have encroached and deserve little audience. However, when the Navy replaced the F-14 Tomcat with the Super Hornet, it was they who encroached on the community. Patriotic citizens in the vicinity of NAS Key West who dutifully bought homes outside of the published noise zones are currently living inside of noise zones because of a much-louder aircraft with a larger sonic footprint.

In 2007, as the number of Super Hornet flights and associated noise increased around Naval Air Station Key West, citizens asked questions of the Navy. The Navy responded that they had evaluated the local impacts of the louder aircraft in a 2003 “Environmental Assessment” (EA), and had issued a “Finding of No Significant Impact” (FONSI). While these documents were well known locally because their subject was proposed dredging of Key West Harbor, there is no record before 2007 of the Navy’s claim that the same 2003 EA and FONSI also applied to, and exonerated, the Super Hornet.

The Navy has proposed to fly the F-35 at Naval Air Station (NAS) Key West and has released the NAS Key West Airfield Operations Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) to evaluate its impacts, as they are legally required to. Despite their claims, the Navy has not, to this day, complied with the same obligations for the louder (according to their data) and earlier cousin of the F-35, the FA-18E/F “Super Hornet,” that is a benchmark for the F-35 study. The Navy’s assertion that a 2003 Environmental Assessment (EA) “…addressed the Navy’s transition from the F-14 Tomcat aircraft to the FA-18 E/F Super Hornet…” is false.

On page 16 of their October 31, 2013 Record of Decision, the Navy repeated the same lies with regard to the 2003 EA that were originally stated in 2007. Perhaps it is true that if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.

The FEIS (Section 6, Aircraft Noise Study for NAS Key West) clearly indicates the huge relative noise impacts of the FA-18E/F (see Figure 6-4 below), a fact reinforced by several other Navy documents showing the Super Hornet can be more than four times as loud as the airplane it replaced (more than 20dB in some cases, according to Navy data), and yet the Navy claims that the introduction of the Super Hornet to Key West had “No Significant Impact.”

The Navy has a vitally important mission, and an increasingly challenging training environment in which to prepare for it. They have the right and duty to accomplish that mission, but they do not have the right to break our nation’s laws in the process.

For more background information and documentation you may wish to visit my website here.

What follows is my open letter to the United States Fleet Forces Command:

Cdr John Hammerstrom, USN (Ret.)

P.O. Box 860

Tavernier, FL 33070-0860

 

November 12, 2013

Mr. Ted Brown

Public Affairs Officer

United States Fleet Forces Command

1562 Mitscher Avenue, Suite 250

Norfolk, VA 23551-2487

Dear Mr. Brown,

The final step in a three-year process analyzing the potential impacts of introducing the F-35 to Naval Air Station Key West occurred on October 31, 2013, when Roger M. Natsuhara, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Energy, Installations & Environment) signed the Record of Decision (ROD) for the NAS Key West Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS). Three weeks earlier, officials from Monroe County and our Congressman, Representative Joe Garcia, met with the Navy to discuss several concerns.

One of our concerns, as expressed in the ROD, was that “…impacts associated with the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet were included in the FEIS baseline, notwithstanding the fact the impacts to the surrounding community were not properly evaluated in previous National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) documents. Including the Super Hornet has the effect of reducing the magnitude of [F-35] impacts…” In stark personal terms, according to FEIS data, that means that 2,416 people in the vicinity of NAS Key West have been living with the impacts of the Super Hornet (the baseline) for a decade without the benefit of the environmental impact assessment promised them by NEPA, and the F-35 introduction would “only” affect 366 more people.

That concern remains unresolved and I write here as an individual to elaborate on Monroe County’s statement that the “…impacts of the…Super Hornet…were not properly evaluated…” which conflicts with the Navy’s often-repeated assertion that the impacts were properly evaluated.

For example, the FEIS (Section 1.3.1, page 1.4) states that the 2003 Environmental Assessment (EA) for Fleet Support and Infrastructure Improvements at NAS Key West “…addressed the Navy’s transition from the F-14 Tomcat aircraft to the FA-18E/F Super Hornet…”

The Record of Decision is more expansive. “The 2003 Environmental Assessment (EA) for Fleet Support and Infrastructure Improvements at NAS Key West analyzed potential impacts to the human environment, including noise and flight paths resulting from all transient aircraft operations, including the F/A18E/F operations. As a result of that analysis, the DoN reached a Finding of No Significant Impact on April 14, 2003, which completed and satisfied the NEPA requirements associated with the introduction of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet at NAS Key West.”

As you may know, I have studied the EA and all of the related documents. I hope you will help me understand some perplexing issues.

1. I have been unable to find any record prior to 2007 in which the 2003 EA is mentioned in conjunction with the introduction of the Super Hornet at NAS Key West. Would you please identify the earliest public notice declaring that the 2003 Environmental Assessment would include an analysis of the impacts of the Super Hornet at NAS Key West?

2. NEPA documentation requires identification of a Proposed Action and a listing of Alternatives. If the 2003 EA satisfies the Navy’s NEPA obligations, why is there no mention of the Super Hornet in either the Proposed Action or the Alternatives?

3. The complete family of documents that constitute the entire NEPA record for this EA consists of more than 500 pages, from the “brief letter” of October 2, 2002, through the final document—the Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI)—signed April 14, 2003. The Super Hornet is only mentioned on three pages. Please explain how it is possible that three pages, or less than 1% of the documentation, constitutes a proper evaluation of the aircraft’s impacts?

4. The FONSI does not mention the Super Hornet. How is it possible for the FONSI to complete the NEPA requirements for analysis of the Super Hornet, when the aircraft is not mentioned?

5. A one-line reference, “Wyle Laboratories Draft Noise Study for Forecast CY07 Conditions at NAS Key West” is listed in the 2003 EA. A Freedom of Information Act request resulted in a PDF document on a CD. The Adobe Reader “document properties” for that Wyle Lab study indicates that the author was Jrachami, and the “creation date” was Apr 24, 2003. Please explain the apparent anachronism of this EA reference having been created ten days after the FONSI was signed.

6. A Freedom of Information Act request and an Appeal for a copy of the Draft 2003 EA (that preceded the Environmental Assessment itself) were both denied because a copy couldn’t be located, despite the facts that the document had been distributed to at least eleven public agencies and was the subject of a “diligent” search by then Commanding Officer of Naval Air Station Key West, Captain J.R. Brown; the Judge Advocate General of the Navy (Code 34); the Department of the Navy Office of General Counsel; the Assistant General Counsel (Installations and Environment) and the Chief of Naval Operations Environmental Readiness Division (N45). Curiously, Monroe County Commissioner Kim Wigington later requested a copy and was denied access with the statement, “Exemption (b)(5)…[protects] inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency.”  Please state whether the Navy located a copy and please explain further the justification for exempting a public document.

7. Subsequent to the Navy’s inability to locate the Draft 2003 EA, I found and photocopied the public document. There is absolutely no mention of the Super Hornet in the Draft EA, and the EA’s “Wyle Lab” reference is absent. Please explain the incongruity of the Navy’s claim that they analyzed the Super Hornet in accordance with NEPA regulations, when the Draft EA is void of any reference to the aircraft.

Respectfully Submitted,

John G. Hammerstrom, Commander, USN (Ret.)

Cc: Congressman Joe Garcia

Monroe County Board of County Commissioners

Kim Wigington

Richard Grosso, Esq.

TheBluePaper.com

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John Hammerstrom is a retired Naval Aviator who believes in and supports the mission of the U.S. Navy, having served over 25 years in defense of the U.S. Constitution as an enlisted machinist, aircraft-carrier based pilot and Aeronautical Engineering Duty Officer.