April 13,
2001
Bombing Big Sur
Apparently, the deserts of Nevada, so
similar in terrain to the Pentagon's other main target practice
area, the Iraqi outback, simply aren't challenging enough for
the Navy's top guns any more. Now they want to bomb Big Sur.
A new plan issued by the Navy's
Strike Fighter Wing in January calls for nearly 3,000 bombing
practice a year runs from Lenmoore Naval Air Station, in the
Central Valley, and aircraft carriers in the Pacific, to Fort
Hunter Leggett, in the Santa Lucia Mountains near Big Sur. Lemoore
is the home base for the F/A-18 Hornet strike fighter planes.
The scheme calls for the jets to drop 25-pound "test"
bombs onto a 500-foot in diameter target painted on the grounds
of Fort Hunter Liggett. One Navy flack called the plan "kindergarten
for bombers".
Pressed by Congressman Sam
Farr (D-Monterrey) to explain itself, the Navy, perhaps trying
to capitalize on the current fuel crunch, says it all comes down
to conserving energy. By bombing Big Sur, instead of Fallon,
Nevada, they can save nearly $3 million a year in fuel costs.
It's curious that the Navy doesn't show such a penny-pinching
attitude when it comes to funding for Trident submarines, F-22
jets or aircraft carriers.
The 150,000 acre military base,
nestled next to the Ventana Wilderness Area, was sold to the
Pentagon, at a handsome profit, by William Randolph Hearst in
the 1940s, who had evicted the remaining Salinan Indians from
the site when he purchased it as his private pleasure ground
in the early 1900s. Today, the upper Stony Valley area, wedged
in the mountains, is still largely an entact ecosystem, a thriving
oak savanna of the type that is becoming increasingly rare as
so much of the coast falls to the bulldozers of developers.
Indeed, a 1981 report commissioned
by the Fort's top brass concluded that the base probably contained
a "greater conservation of resources (of grassland, oak
savanna and woodland, and chaparral) than any other contiguous
parcel in the state of California." The land is so special
that National Park Service has tried to get the Army, which manages
the Fort, to turn over to them.
This part of the California
coast is home to some of the nation's rarest and most prized
species, starting with the California condor and the sea otter.
There are also endangered fairy shrimp, Pogogyne clareanna, a
rare mint endemic to the area, bald eagles and 450 Tule elk.
Not to worry, says the Navy,
we have the best interests of these creatures at heart and no
harm will come to them. This is a rather robust bit of eco-consciousness
from the same group that is even now attempting to secure the
right to permanently bombard humpback whales in the Pacific with
mega-shots of high range sonar. The sonar pulses have been known
to cause the whales to issue cries of distress, become disoriented
and beach themselves. The Navy's underwater soundings have also
been linked to ear hemorrhages in the giants of the deep.
Those bullseyes for the Navy
fighter jets' bombs would nearly mark the precise area that the
now landless Salinan tribe considers as the center of the creation.
And indeed the area harbors one of the richest clusters of archaeological
sites on the California coast, including painted caves and a
delicate and fragile sandstone natural arch used for vision quests.
"It only takes one bomb to land in the wrong place,"
says Gregg Castro, head of the Salinan tribal council. "The
arch is unique. Once it's gone it's gone. There's no repairing
it."
There are also several private
inholdings within the proposed bombing range, including the San
Antonio de Padua Mission, founded in 1771. The Franciscans--the
closest you get to a nature sect in the Catholic Church--aren't
too pleased about their ancient sanctuary being buzzed by F/A-18
fighter jets ten times a day. The Friars are joined in opposition
with the Benedictines, who have just built and opened the New
Camaldoli Hermitage, a hillside retreat meant for quit meditation
and worship, a few miles away.
Forgive the residents of the
coast if they are a little bit skeptical of the top guns at Navy
HQ. After all, this is the same Navy which just sank a Japanese
fishing boat because the sonar crew was distracted by a group
of big time Republican donors who had been allowed to pilot a
billion dollar submarine. Will execs from Boeing or Microsoft
be allowed to co-pilot bombing runs? It's also the same outfit
that had to admit that more than 40 percent of its "smartest"
bombs had missed their target in the recent remote control bombing
of Baghdad.
The Navy brass blamed those
recent misfires on wind. Well, there's plenty of that on Big
Sur. So you can excuse the residents of San Luis Obispo and,
even Salinas, if they are somewhat anxious about the Navy's novice
bombardiers ability to consistently hit their targets.
The Navy's track record at
other bombing sites around the West hasn't been so hot, either.
Nevada has been rocked by dozens of nuclear bomb tests, but what
people are mostly complaining about these days is the arrogance
and nastiness of the Navy's fighter pilots, who are relentless
bombing the desert out by Fallon. The Navy has succeeded in doing
what seemed impossible: uniting rancers with the anti-environmental
Wise Use movement with activists from the Sierra Club.
First, there are the mysterious
cancers among the children of Fallon-11 cases of a rare pediatric
leukemia in this small town. More than 150 times what scientists
would expect to find. Researchers are zeroing in on Navy pilots,
who have been dumping jet fuel from their planes on their bombing
practice runs. The Navy, suddenly indifferent to fuel conservation,
admits to the dropping the fuel, but denies any link to the cancers.
On January 18, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, a ranking member of the
Senate Environment Committee, commissioned an investigation into
the causes of the cancer cluster.
Even stranger is the incident
on last October 29 when Navy pilots opened fire with live 20
millimeter ammunition on telephone company workers outside of
Fallon. Fortunately, the pilot missed the workers, but hit their
truck. Navy officials said the pilot, from the same F/A-18 Strike
Force Wing at Lemoore that now wants to bomb Big Sur, mistook
the telephone tower for his intended target.
Opponents of the Navy's mock
warfare operations warn Big Sur residents that these kinds of
mishap occur all to often. "Civilians are out there working
and they have jets strafing," says Grace Potori, of the
Rural Alliance for Military Accountability. "This goes along
with the sonic booms and the Navy's inability to stay within
their operations areas. They can't control their own people.
They hot-dog out there all the time."
The plan to bomb Big Sur is
really an attempt by the Pentagon to keep from losing its dwindling
empire. Fort Hunter Liggett was supposed to be closed down in
1995 as an unnecessary and costly facility under the Base Realignment
and Closures Act. This scheme is largely an attempt to give it
a second life as a bomb crater. But surely there are better uses.
Perhaps, some of it should become a national park. But most of
it should be returned to the Salinan Tribe, as they were promised
in the 1860s. It would be in good hands. CP
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