SITKA \u2014 Officials in the city of Sitka have approved a non-binding resolution asking the U.S. Navy move its offshore training exercises in the Gulf of Alaska in an attempt to protect marine life.<\/p>\n
The Sitka Assembly voted 6-1 Tuesday in favor of the resolution requesting the move farther offshore for the training location and for the Navy activities to be rescheduled for fall or winter, The Sitka Sentinel reported.<\/p>\n
\u201cHazardous materials and underwater noise from military exercises could harm marine life and habitat, and the training will take place when many fish populations are migrating and spawning,\u201d the resolution said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe training area and vicinity is a highly productive region for many marine fish and shellfish populations and supports some of the most productive fisheries in the United States, and an important spawning area for many fishes,\u201d the resolution added.<\/p>\n
The exercises called \u201cNorthern Edge\u201d are scheduled for May. Past exercises have been conducted in the winter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is pretty critical, since a third of our economy is based on \u2018blue\u2019 jobs,\u201d assembly member Bob Potrzuski said, referring to maritime-based industries. \u201cI think we should do everything we can to support that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steven Eisenbeisz voted against the resolution, saying there was not enough information available to conclude whether the training activities actually harm marine life.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re being asked to vote on the speculation it could harm (them) in the future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The resolution draft was given to the assembly by the Eyak Preservation Council of Cordova<\/span>.<\/p>\n The council\u2019s program director, Emily Stolarcyk, said similar measures have been approved in Cordova, Kodiak, Valdez, Homer and by tribal organizations in several communities.<\/p>\n She encouraged those who attended Tuesday\u2019s meeting to read the Navy\u2019s environmental impact statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SITKA \u2014 Officials in the city of Sitka have approved a non-binding resolution asking the U.S. Navy move its offshore training exercises in the Gulf of Alaska in an attempt to protect marine life. The Sitka Assembly voted 6-1 Tuesday in favor of the resolution requesting the move farther offshore for the training location and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-7992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7992\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7992"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=7992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}