Re: Such Nonsense!

["David Keith (ISIS)" <dbkGU@hamp.hampshire.edu>]

Dear Pro's,

During the Gulf War, the group I work with in Massachusetts sued the Air 
Force at Westover ARB for failing to comply with the National 
Environmental Policy Act because it had not filed an environmental 
assessment for increased night flight activity of its air transports. We 
had been challenging an existing impact statement for failing to disclose 
impacts of routine peacetime operations. 

Had we not filed this second suit, the Air Force could have claimed our 
lack of complaint as proof that impacts that we had called unacceptable were 
in fact acceptable. 

One of the people who helped author the Environmental Policy Act pointed 
out to us that the act was specifically written to exclude the kind of 
waiver the Air Force claimed to have received. The Air Force chose to 
make moot our challenge to their supposed waiver by filing an 
Environmental Assessment. 

That assessment, which included baseline impacts of peacetime operations, 
so contradicted the earlier impact statement that the courts mandated a whole
new impact statement. 

I do not believe the security of the country or our troops was in any way 
harmed by Air Force compliance with environmental law. I am convinced 
that if we concede to the military the power to supercede environmental 
law by declaring that comliance will impinge on national security, we 
should be quite clear that we would effectively be making military 
compliance voluntary. 

The military can always claim national security 
interest and claim that the information proving their assertion is 
classified. Letting the military waive envrionmental compliance for what 
it claims to be security interests will make any legal challenge under 
the National Environmental Policy Act futile.

So please, Mr. MGlinn, hang in there

Sincerely,
David Keith