SWEF Abandons the Rules With Public Trust the Loss

The Navy refused to allow an unbiased public exposure study of its Surface Warfare Engineering Facility, known as the SWEF. This action and years of refusal to provide an environmental baseline to the California Coastal Commission have jeopardized SWEF expansion plans.

What is this all about and why is the Coastal Commission involved in Navy affairs?

It’s all about a nearly five-year effort by the Coastal Commission to obtain an environmental safety review of a powerful radar facility. The SWEF bristles with a dozen radar systems. It sits at the mouth of the Port of Hueneme less than 1,000 feet from a preexisting residential community and overlooks public beaches.

The Coastal Commission is involved because federal law requires government agencies to comply with state coastal acts. This was ignored when the SWEF was constructed in the mid-1980s. This compliance failure went unnoticed until years later when the Navy proposed flying jets fast and low over the Santa Barbara Channel and aimed at the SWEF. Controversy over the flight proposal led to discovery of a 1978 pre-construction report showing Navy knowledge that SWEF operations would violate the Coastal Act.

In August 1995, the Beacon Foundation, a Ventura County environmental organization, brought the pre-construction report to the Coastal Commission and pursuit began of an environmental review. After claiming SWEF had made a filing, Navy officials spent a year looking for it. They finally admitted that their inability to find any environmental documentation was a “breach of public trust” yet they still refused to comply.

The Navy warned about “technophobic hysteria” and suggested that the issues were too technical for the Coastal Commission to understand. The commission asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to set up a mediation. The Navy agreed to participate.

Use of an independent technical panel is innovative and can work wonders with willing parties. Despite pledging cooperation, the Navy ended up supporting only those results it found favorable.

The Navy announced that it was “confident that this third-party review will verify safe operations.” It sent more than 1,400 letters to area residents supporting the panel process.

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On March 23, the individual panelist reports were released. No joint findings were made. The NOAA moderator opined that SWEF operations appeared “generally safe” to the panelists, provided operations were strictly restrained. Four panelists individually recommended improved accountability and further operational restrictions because, as one put it, “The SWEF facility is not intrinsically safe.”

The Navy seized on the moderator’s “generally safe” comment and issued a press release headlined, “Panel Determines SWEF Is Safe.” Then it privately came to commission staff with proposed modifications to SWEF operations to “enhance public safety.” The SWEF proposed to adopt some of the least restrictive recommendations, modify others and ignore the rest.

This picking and choosing proved unacceptable to the Coastal Commission. On April 11, the commission held a lengthy hearing on the panel report. After presentation of the Navy proposal, the commission agreed unanimously that more of the recommendations needed to be adopted.

The crucial sticking point was a recommendation so reasonable that rejection invites concern. A panelist concluded that all the past in-house Navy safety studies were just “the minimum necessary” and that a “comprehensive public exposure study” should be required. This would include participation of an expert not connected with the Defense Department.

The Navy balked and offered only an embellished version of an in-house survey. Faced with this impasse, the commission gave the SWEF time for reconsideration. A decision was set for the end of the session April 14. No one appeared for the Navy at that hearing but a SWEF letter reiterated rejection.

The commission then took the only step open to it and declined to approve all pending Navy proposals for SWEF expansion. Last Tuesday the commission unanimously reaffirmed this decision. Despite a massive and misinformed letter-writing campaign, no one appeared on behalf of the Navy.

Thus ended a mediation process high in promise and worthy of respect. The Navy pulled the plug and deserted safety recommendations of national radar experts.

The time is overdue for the SWEF to get its environmental house in order. It should agree to the public exposure study. It should also consider relocating the emitters of its most powerful radar to a location remote from public exposure. Two antenna sites already connected to the SWEF by fiber optics are San Nicholas Island and Point Mugu. This alternative would assure safe continued SWEF operations. The next move is up to the Navy.