US Navy settles its sonar suit

Source: Agencies  |   2008-12-29  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

THE United States Navy has settled a lawsuit filed by environmentalists challenging its use of sonar in hundreds of submarine-hunting exercises around the world.

The Navy said on Saturday that the deal reached with the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups requires it to continue to research how sonar affects whales and other marine mammals.

It does not require sailors to adopt additional measures to protect the animals when they use sonar.

The agreement comes one month after the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Navy in another sonar lawsuit the NRDC filed.

"The Navy is pleased that after more than three years of extensive litigation, this matter has been brought to an end on favorable terms," Frank R. Jimenez, the Navy's general counsel, said in a statement.

The NRDC and five other plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in federal court in the Central District of California on October 19, 2005.

The complaint sought a court order to curb mid-frequency sonar, the Navy's preferred method for detecting enemy submarines, on the grounds the sonar disturbs and sometimes kills whales and dolphins.

The Navy said the suit was amended twice so that it challenged its use of sonar in 370 specific training and testing activities around the world. In the years since, federal courts in California and Hawaii ruled in favor of the NRDC and other environmental groups and ordered the Navy to restrict its use of sonar to protect the animals.

But last month, in a ruling on an NRDC lawsuit challenging the Navy's sonar training exercises off Southern California, the Supreme Court ruled that military training trumps protecting whales.

Chief Justice Roberts wrote that forcing the Navy to deploy an inadequately trained anti-submarine fleet would jeopardize the safety of the fleet. He also wrote it was unclear how many marine mammals the Navy's sonar exercises might harm.