[CPEO-MEF] Bloodsworth Island (MD) live-fire to resume

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Navy plans new exercises on bay island

Live fire, bombs, strafing proposed at Bloodsworth; Md. residents,
watermen worry; Halted in 1996, exercises called wartime necessity

By Tom Pelton
Baltimore Sun
March 4, 2005

The Navy is proposing to resume bombing and strafing runs and live-fire
military training exercises on islands in the Chesapeake Bay after a
nine-year period of relative peace for the ducks, herons and diamondback
terrapins that are now their only inhabitants.

Officials with the Naval Air Systems Command in Patuxent River said that
expanded, year-round, day-and-night military exercises on Bloodsworth
Island and three tiny islands near Tangier Sound are necessary because
the nation is at war.

"Recent international events have shown that maintaining national
security and global stability requires U.S. military forces to be ready
for ... threats and challenges," the Navy wrote in a draft environmental
assessment mailed in the past few days to officials on the Eastern
Shore, watermen, local citizens and others with a stake in the area.

Bob Coble, deputy public affairs officer for Patuxent Naval Air Systems
Command, said yesterday that military operations are nothing new on
Bloodsworth Island, which has been owned by the Navy since 1942 but free
from bombing exercises since 1996.



...

For the entire article, see
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.bloodsworth04mar04,1,5976741.story?coll=bal-home-headlines

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org
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