California Tries to Save the Whales From the Bush Administration

 Excerpt LA Times article "Save the whales from the Navy ":

No president [before?] has ever tried to override the 36-year-old Coastal Zone Management Act, which gives states the authority to protect marine resources, and Bush's cursory explanation for his order raises grave constitutional questions under the separation of powers doctrine. Even more questionable is the decision by the Council on Environmental Quality, which posits an emergency that doesn't exist.

No one is asking the Navy to scrap its training plans, simply to take precautions, such as shutting off the sonar when whales get closer than 2,200 yards and keeping ships more than 12 miles off the coast. So what's the emergency? If the administration were allowed to countermand judges and federal statutes on such flimsy grounds, it could use nearly any excuse to flout environmental laws -- like claiming that high oil prices constitute an emergency justifying unlimited drilling off the California coast.

If this were a simple matter of balancing national security with the safety of a few whales, as Navy officials claim, we'd side with the sailors. But it's really about whether preserving threatened species is worth imposing some inconveniences on the military, and about protecting the nation's environmental laws from an all-out assault by a hostile administration. 

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tags: whales  bush administration  military  navy  bush  environment  

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