Damn the Torpedoes

In his farewell address as chief of naval operations, Admiral E.R. Zumwalt said in June of this year: "Our Navy has reached the point where it no longer can, with certainty, guarantee free use of the ocean lifelines to US and allied forces in the face of a new, powerful, and growing Soviet fleet."

The entire address was dutifully ignored by the New York Times and most other national newspapers, but one may be confident that they will give extensive coverage to another naval story, the lawsuit filed against the Navy in connection with its base for Trident missile submarines. By Congressional approval, this is to be built within the already existing 8527-acre Bangor Naval Annex on the Kitsap peninsula in Washington State. The Navy has submitted an environmental impact statement of 6 volumes weighing a total of 21 pounds, explaining why siting the facility at the Bangor Annex is environmentally acceptable and preferable to any other site along the US seaboards.

None of which satisfies those who use environmentalism as a horse on which to crusade against what they consider the military-industrial complex. The Navy has been sued by a motley crowd of plaintiffs, including the Friends of the Earth, the Wilderness Society, and economist Walter W. Heller, who owns a vacation home near the Trident base site.

There is little that the plaintiffs can pounce on in the Navy's impact statements. Ah, but did the Navy follow the Environmental Protection Act when it decided to develop the Trident in the first place? The Trident will carry missiles of longer range than the Polaris-Poseidon submarines, and will thus be able to patrol more ocean without moving out of range of the target. This, it seems, is an environmental issue, and should therefore have been opened up to the non-environmental harangues of the Friends of the Earth and the enemies of national security.

Environmental impact statements require the party who wants to change the status quo to defend the impact of the innovation. The opponents are not required to analyze the impact of failing to proceed with the innovation; they may merely obstruct it with an ever increasing arsenal of legal maneuvers, whether the innovation is a submarine base, a power plant or an oil refinery. The present nature of impact statements therefore stacks the deck in favor of the reactionary who opposes progress and the freeloader who values the view from his window higher than the national need. The joke of it is that these reactionaries and freeloaders think of themselves as superliberals serving the public interest.

Damn the torpedoes, save Walter Heller's vacation home!