Coast Guard weighing concerns about live fire weapons training on the Great Lakes

From Great Lakes Wiki

Since January, the U.S. Coast Guard has been conducting live-fire training exercises on the Great Lakes with machine guns, rifles and pistols.
The Coast Guard officially proposed the establishment of 34 “safety zones” at least five miles offshore in each of the lakes on Aug 1. Hearings were held in nine cities across the region and a website was created to address citizens’ concerns.
More than 1,000 people attended the meetings and submitted 880 comments.
Lawyer Bernard Grysen attended the hearing in Spring Lake, and said “the overwhelming majority of people there were against it.”
“What exactly is the threat we are addressing?” he said. “The Coast Guard must look for alternatives for safety and security on the Great Lakes without causing environmental problems.”
The M-240B machine guns can fire up to 600 rounds of ammunition in a minute. Three tons of lead would be deposited in the Great Lakes every year.
“It’s a really devastating weapon,” Grysen said. “One of those bullets will go right through a boat.”
The 34 safety zones will be used to train 57 Coast Guard units. Each will be roughly 80 square miles, covering about 2.5 percent of the surface area in the world’s largest freshwater system.
The public will be notified 24 hours before each training exercise through news media and maritime radio. The Coast Guard has already held 24 live-fire exercises since January without incident.
“The way it was done caused a lot of concern,” Grysen said. “It was done without public notice and without giving people a chance to comment.”
According to the Coast guard’s website, the training is “essential” to enlisted men and women “to be operationally ready to conduct maritime law enforcement, national defense and maritime homeland security missions.”
Live-fire training exercises are “scheduled to occur on average only a few times a year for a few hours at a time.”
Curt Leitz, executive director of the nonprofit organization Citizens for Environmental Enforcement, said the training exercises are “a clear violation of the Clean Water Act,” the federal law governing water pollution.
“If someone doesn’t hold their feet to the fire, the Coast Guard will feel they don’t need to follow the laws,” he said.
Leitz, an avid fisherman and boater, said the group was formed to address “enforcement gaps” between recent environmental laws and the government’s ability to implement the laws.
“After budget cuts, the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t have the money or personnel to enforce the law, especially the Clean Water Act,” he said.
The Coast Guard has suspended the training exercises until it can adequately review the complaints filed by citizens and organizations from all the Great Lakes states.
It offered no timeline for a decision. For more information or to submit a comment, visit www.uscgd9safetyzones.com.

by Jim Vollstaedt

• [www.mecprotects.org/Michigan Environmental Council]
  

Dr. Bernard Grysen will hold a free meeting for the public at the Holiday Inn at 940 W Savidge Street, Spring Lake, Michigan 49456, phone number (616) 846-1000, Dec. 7 at 6:30 p.m. For more information, visit keeptheleadout.org.

Back to Commerce