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Navy To Use Sonar Despite Court Rulings Act allows exemptions from environmental law during wartime by Joan Conrow When it comes to complying with environmental laws, the U.S. Navy has proven to be as slippery as the marine mammals that federal statutes strive to protect. Last August, the Navy said it would comply with the law and conduct the studies required to use high-intensity sonar at all its major ranges, including those around Hawai'i. Conservation groups, seeking to spare whales, dolphins and other ocean animals from the potentially lethal affects of underwater sonar, breathed a sigh of relief. But recently the Pentagon announced that the Navy doesn't have to comply with the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) while it's conducting those studies. Donald Schregardus, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for the environment, said the Navy sought the exemption because "we cannot stop training for the next two years" while the studies are being done. Schregardus is the same man who, last August, vowed the Navy would no longer attempt to circumvent the law, as it had done in seeking a six-month exemption from the MMPA to allow the Rim of the Pacific summertime war games to proceed in Hawai'i. At the time, the Navy was facing litigation over its use of sonar in Hawaiian waters, just as it is currently facing a lawsuit over similar activities off the coast of Southern California. The Pentagon's announcement came shortly after the California Coastal Commission declared that the Navy's proposed safety measures for the sonar exercises do not adequately protect marine life. The commission urged the Navy to adopt a number of additional provisions before conducting its planned training. Instead, the Navy appealed to the Pentagon, and it invoked the 2004 National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the Department of Defense (DOD) to grant itself categorical exemptions from environmental laws during times of war. In a three-paragraph memorandum, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England excused the Navy from all provisions of the MMPA in its use of high-intensity, mid-frequency sonar for a period of two years and stated that, in that time, the Navy would "execute the plan coordinated with the Department of Commerce to come into full compliance" with the MMPA. Joel Reynolds, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, says the exemption is "a clear admission by the U.S. Navy that its current operations violate the protective standards" for marine mammals. "It's not that the Navy can't comply with the law. It's that the Navy chooses not to." Reynolds and other lawyers, representing conservation groups in the fight against the Navy's unfettered use of sonar, plan to proceed with their lawsuit, anyway, contending the training exercises also violate other federal environmental laws. "The Navy has more than enough room in the oceans to train effectively without injuring or killing endangered whales and other marine species," Reynolds says. "Whales and other marine mammals shouldn't have to die for practice."