Pritzker

AMENDED ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING IN PART PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT AND GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING IN PART DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

Plaintiffs, various environmental organizations and concerned individuals, seek in-junctive relief against federal officials to limit the United States Navy’s peacetime use of a low frequency sonar system for training, testing and routine operations. 1 This technology, Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (“SURTASS”) Low Frequency Active Sonar (“LFA”), sends out intense sonar pulses at low frequencies that travel hundreds of miles in order to timely detect increasingly quiet enemy submarines. The proposed action in the Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (“SEIS”) is the Navy’s employment of up to four SURTASS LFA sonar systems in the ocean. Based on current operational requirements, routine training, testing and military operations using these sonat systems could occur in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, as well as the Mediterranean Sea. See SEIS ES-6.

Plaintiffs charge that the National Marine Fisheries Service (“NMFS”) improperly approved use of SURTASS LFA in many of the world’s…