The Navy may have to consider moving many of its EA-18G Growlers from their oceanside Washington base to one in the California desert because of the “ear-splitting” noise that residents say the jets make passing over nearby neighborhoods.
A federal judge ordered the Navy to consider whether it may need to move at least some of the more than 100 attack jets stationed at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. The base just north of Seattle is the home of the Navy’s Growler fleet, with 14 squadrons and the schoolhouse for pilots all based there. The judge sided with nearby homeowners in the nearby town of Coupeville have sued over new training patterns the jets have been flying to practice landing on aircraft carriers.
“When the Navy flies Track 32, they fly directly over 640 Patmore Road, low enough to observe the pilot’s face,” said Maryon Attwood, a former resident of Coupeville who moved away in 2020. Track 32 is a landing pattern at a small auxiliary airfield known as OLF Coupeville just outside Whidbey Island’s main base. The airfield — which simulates the deck of a carrier for landings — is less than a mile from Attwood’s former home.
In a declaration as part of a federal lawsuit, Attwood said her neighborhood had suffered “four-fold increase in jet noise” which drove her out of the “forever home” she bought in 2005. The Navy jets made it impossible to do any outdoor activities, talk on the phone, have visitors, watch television, listen to music, eat a meal undisturbed or sleep, she said.
The new court order was first reported by Simple Flying.
The Navy’s EA-18Gs Growler is a hybrid attack jet based on the F/A-18F Super Hornet. The plane carriers air-to-air weapons but is primarily designed as an electronic warfare platform that can track and attack enemy radar sources (the Growler appears to also be, according to a quick review by Task & Purpose, the only aircraft in the U.S.’s inventory named specifically for a noise).
Kenneth L. Waters, a retired Boeing commercial airplane engineer and local resident said in his sworn statement that a return to previous lower levels of use of the base would be a huge relief, noting that overhead traffic used to be “very irritating but tolerable as they happened less often.”
In March 2019, the Navy issued its final decision which meant adding 36 aircrafts (to the existing 82 aircraft) and two new expeditionary squadrons and additional personnel. The move increased annual airfield operations by 33%. Use of the field jumped from 90 hours per year to more than 300 after 2019, the lawsuit said.
“The frequency and harmful ear-splitting noise of [the Coupeville training] flights are not endurable and have forced several property owners in our neighborhood to leave the island,” Waters said.
A move to California
In response to the lawsuit, the Navy has argued that the only base the EA-18As could be is Naval Air Facility El Centro, but that expanding that facility to absorb the Growler training would require more than $800 million.
The ruling is the latest chapter in a multi-year lawsuit that began with local complaints over noise pollution. The Navy drastically increased its use of the Coupeville airfield in 2019, a decision the required it to conduct an environmental impact study. The Navy’s study found that the new flying would not cause undue local impact — a conclusion that residents disputed and filed suit over. In 2022, the court found that the Navy didn’t comply with environmental rules in that 2019.
In 2019, Washington’s Attorney General and Citizens of Ebey’s Reserve, a group representing citizens living near Whidbey Island, Washington filed lawsuits against the Navy and Department of Defense over its decision to expand operations with its Boeing EA-18G Growlers at the base.
The groups argued that more Growlers over Whidbey Island would “adversely affect” at least ten public schools, seven state parks, bird habitat areas, state historic sites, and state-owned tidelands and waterways. The groups also argued that the Navy didn’t fully consider the option of moving its increased growler operations to Naval Air Facility El Centro, California.
In August 2022, a federal judge ruled that the Navy violated the National Environmental Policy Act and didn’t consider the impacts to local residents and the surrounding environment. The court also adopted recommendations from a U.S. federal magistrate, filed in December 2021, who ruled that the Navy had, essentially, cooked the books on the earlier study.
“The Navy selected methods of evaluating the data that supported its goal of increasing Growler operations,” Chief Magistrate Judge J. Richard Creatura wrote in his report. “The Navy did this at the expense of the public and the environment, turning a blind eye to data that would not support this intended result. Or, to borrow the words of noted sports analyst Vin Scully, the Navy appears to have used certain statistics ‘much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.’”
On Aug. 16, a federal court judge in Washington ruled that the Navy must update its compliance to the NEPA by May 1, 2025 and report its progress every 90 days. Part of that order requires the Navy to again consider the impact if the jets were moved to El Centro, which has a massive, isolated desert range.
The court also requires that the Navy revisit several points of contention that it missed in its original assessments: greenhouse gas emission calculations, quantifying the impact of increased operations on classroom learning, species-specific impacts on birds, and a more detailed consideration to moving growler operations to California.
“The Navy continues to comply with all court orders and is preparing supplemental analysis to address the deficiencies in the original 2018 analysis identified by the court. This includes addressing the court’s ruling as to the El Centro alternative,” Ted Brown, a Navy spokesperson told Task & Purpose in a statement.
The Washington AG did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Citizens of Ebey’s Reserve said in a draft release sent to Task & Purpose Monday that the judge approved their motion to enforce a deadline because they were “concerned that the Navy might drag its feet” to complete the new environmental assessment.
In a positive note for the Navy, the judge denied the group’s September 2023 request which would’ve vacated the Navy’s authorization for increased Growler landing operations. The judge ruled that the operations are important to national security.
“That rationale places an impossible burden on the plaintiffs that can never be overcome because whatever the military says goes,” COER chairperson, Bob Wilbur, said in a release.
The group is considering whether to appeal the decision.
Growler expansion
In November 2016, the Navy released its draft Environmental Impact Statement and solicited public comment on three scenarios for expanding Growler training at Whidbey Island. In 2018, the Navy said it preferred one of the scenarios “that best met operational demands” with the least amount of disruptions to other Ault Field operations, provided the best pilot training and impacted the fewest residents.
“The Court reiterates this ‘not-in-my-backyard’ approach subverts the public interest by proposing shifting noise to another, more populated community,” the judge wrote in his Aug. 16 order.
Public health impacts
In response to the Navy’s 2019 draft Environmental Impact Statement, the Washington Department of Health concluded that “noise levels similar to those reported from NAS Whidbey Island Complex described in all recent reports pose a threat to public health.” Washington officials cited previous studies and literature on the adverse impacts of noise on mental and cardiovascular health, particularly for children, the elderly, shift-workers, smokers, and individuals with sleep disorders, mental disorders, and physical illnesses.
The plaintiff’s lawsuit stated that the increased operations would mean that more than 12,000 people would be exposed to annual noise levels at or above 65 decibel day-night average and more than 5,000 people exposed to noise levels at or above 75 decibel — about that of a vacuum cleaner — day-night average.
Washington officials noted an “unreasonably high standard” that led to the Navy’s exclusion of non-auditory health effects from its original analysis.
Environmental concerns
The lawsuit against the Navy also challenged the service’s adherence to NEPA, which requires federal agencies, including the DOD, to consider and inform the public about significant environmental impacts of proposed actions.
The suit argued that the Navy “fails to take a hard look at the environmental impacts” of the increased operations and how it would disturb habitats for various endangered and threatened bird species, terrestrial wildlife, and marine mammals, including harbor seals. According to the group, the Navy didn’t address impacts to animals’ physiological stress, mating practices, and migration patterns.
Citizens of the Ebey’s Reserve said that the Navy “significantly underestimated” Growler fuel emissions in its environmental assessment. The group said that the greenhouse gas emissions are “roughly 2.18 times more” than the Navy’s projections.
The Navy’s final environmental assessment also stated that adding additional aircraft and construction at El Centro’s would violate the “Clean Air Act nonattainment area” status and make it more difficult for California to comply with air quality standards.
National security defense
In September 2023, the court said that the status quo at Whidbey Island would allow for a 25 to 40% increase in fuel emissions and increased sensory disturbance for local wildlife. Officials also noted that NEPA does not consider national security as a defense.
The significance of the environmental consequences brought up by advocates “are largely unknown precisely because the Navy – seemingly in an attempt to greenlight the Growler expansion – failed to comply with its statutory obligations to quantify these impacts,” the court said, adding that the “forthcoming” environmental impact statement will “clarify the significance of these impacts.”
However, the Washington judge ruled that the Navy proved that increased operations were vital to national security due to growlers’ airborne electronic attack combat capabilities. The Navy said that interruption to growler training from relocating personnel to another state would “provide our adversaries an uninhibited strategic and tactical advantage which cannot be permitted to happen.”
“The Court must greatly defer to senior military officials’ professional judgements,” the judge ruled.