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Navy agrees to delay
testing of sonar system

By Treena Shapiro
Star-Bulletin

The Navy and the Hawaii County Green Party have agreed that there will be no testing of the Navy's controversial sonar system in Hawaiian waters until after the Navy completes its environmental impact statement and all interested parties have had time to respond.

In a hearing in federal court yesterday, Green Party attorney Lanny Sinkin asked U.S. District Judge Alan Kay to reopen a 1998 case that tried to stop the sonar testing, which the scientists and environmentalists have argued cause the endangered Hawaiian humpback whale to die, strand or change behavioral patterns.

Kay, who had dismissed the 1998 case, took the matter under advisement. In the meantime, however, Kay asked the Navy to prepare a stipulation stating that there would be no testing or deployment of the sonar system until after the environmental report is prepared. Both parties agreed, although the Navy asked that they be allowed to revisit the issue in court in case of an emergency that would force them to deploy the system.

In March, after the Navy tested sonar devices in the Bahamas, 17 whales stranded and nine died.

Last month, although the Navy denied that sonar tests caused the whales' distress, it canceled tests off the coast of New Jersey because the National Marine Fisheries Service could not concur that the tests caused no harm to endangered species.

Randall Young, representing the Navy, said there are currently no plans to deploy the system off the coast of Hawaii or anywhere else.