Navy turning its back, not backing its terns

A backroom deal between the Navy and the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) would rip the heart out of the Alameda National Wildlife Refuge (that the Sierra Club Bay Chapter worked hard to create), home to Northern California's only colony of the endangered least tern.

It has been 14 years since the Navy proposed the closure of the Alameda Naval Weapons Station and 12 years since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked for 575 acres of the land to create a national wildlife refuge to provide habitat for several endangered species including the California least tern and the California brown pelican.

Before the closure, the Navy, through benign neglect, had been an admirable steward of the least-tern nesting colony, one of the most consistent colonies for increasing the species' total population. The terns had nested - and still do - happily undisturbed, between the runways.

The Navy, however, with its `limited' budget, doesn't want to have to pay for cleaning up all the toxic and hazardous wastes it has left at the base. But Fish and Wildlife, with one of the smallest budgets in the federal government, reasonably told the Navy: contaminant clean-up is your job. The Navy disingenuously replied: we're all one federal family; if you take the land, the clean-up is all yours since we all spend the same federal dollars.

For 12 years this stalemate has continued. The Navy does give the FWS some money every year to manage the least-tern colony. The colony has had its ups and downs. Last year was quite a good one, but the year before quite poor, for producing new young terns.

Urns versus terns

Now the Navy is trying to pull a fast one. Despite Fish and Wildlife's priority under the Base Closure Act, the Navy has invited the VA to apply for the refuge site to build a columbarium (a building to hold the urns of ashes of deceased veterans) and a health clinic/hospital. The VA has agreed to do so and has evidently also agreed to pay for contaminant clean-up. The VA is proposing to build on over 100 of the 575 acres of the proposed refuge site. The new buildings would provide perches for hawks and ravens, which prey on terns. The building's lights and garbage facilities would further encourage the raptors and attract a host of new predators such as rats and crows. Predators and habitat loss are already two of the major reasons the least terns are nearing extinction.

Further, the Navy and VA are trying to evade the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA). NEPA requires preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement for any federal project with significant unmitigable environmental impacts. ESA requires a "biological opinion" from the Endangered Species Branch of Fish and Wildlife approving or disapproving any federal project that would affect endangered species. If the opinion determines that a project would harm a listed species, it is difficult to get a project permit without extensive mitigations, and how do you mitigate the loss of northern California's only least-tern colony - when all other attempts to establish a new colony have failed?

These requirements stumped the Navy for a while, but now it is trying something remarkably devious. It is proposing to split the environmental process in two. First it wants to just transfer the land to the VA - this, it believes, would be easily approved because a change of ownership has no impacts - and then the VA would do a separate EIS and request a second biological opinion on whatever the project VA proposes to do. Once the VA owns the land, who's going to say they can't build on it?

Fortunately, NEPA very clearly prohibits this practice of "piecemealing". It forbids the dividing up of a project into smaller pieces. If one action is known to lead to another action that could, and likely would, have unacceptable impacts, the Environmental Impact Statement must address the final outcome, not just the first action.

WhatYouCanDo

Please write to:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein
331 Senate Hart Office Building
Washington, DC 20510.

Thank her for her previous efforts as a strong ally in defending the proposed Alameda National Wildlife Refuge. Ask her to make sure that the refuge gets its full requested site and to tell the VA and Navy not to try to piecemeal the transfer process.

Also write to:

Claude Hutchison
Director of Asset Enterprise Management
Department of Veterans Affairs
Washington, DC 20420.

Tell him that the VA should not seek to take land from the endangered California least tern. There are other sites in Alameda, owned by the Navy and available to the VA, that would not threaten the least tern. The proposed Alameda National Wildlife Refuge lands should be left alone.

If you have questions, call Arthur Feinstein at (415)282-5937

Arthur Feinstein, Bay Chapter Executive Committee