The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission voted 4-3 Thursday to allow Navy SEALs to use 16 or so state parks for special operations training.

The Navy had asked for permission to do the training at 28 state parks in Western Washington, along the Pacific Coast and across Puget Sound.

The Navy has been using state parkland for military training for its SEALs (Sea, Air, and Land special operation teams) the past five years under a right-of-entry permit that was approved in 2015.

The request for new permits prompted considerable public outcry, however, and park commissioners who voted against allowing the Navy’s use of state parks noted the overwhelming opposition to the proposal.

Commissioner Sophia Danenberg said that while she has a family with strong military ties — her father was in the Army, and she was born while he was stationed in Japan and lived her earlier years on a military installation overseas — many people she had spoken to were shocked by the proposal.

The impacts of allowing the training were too great, she said.

“This will ... harm the public’s experience in the parks,” Danenberg said.

“I do believe the Navy has other options,” she added.

Commissioner Ken Bounds said military training wasn’t an appropriate use of state parks. He also said the Navy could find other areas on the West Coast to conduct its special operations training.

Organizations often turn to public parkland for their own needs, he said, for utility easements, homeless encampments, and other non-recreational uses.

“We really have to hold the line,” Bounds said.

Parks serve a special purpose, he said.

Bounds quoted naturalist and author John Muir: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”

Commissioner Michael Latimer, a Navy veteran and former officer, said he found the anti-military comments made by some opponents troubling.

“It saddens and disappoints me when I read and I listen to some of these comments that oppose the training of the Navy SEALs in our state parks,” Latimer said.

“My belief is that many of the comments are based on misconceptions and inaccurate information, stereotypes and negative bias,” he added.

Latimer recalled growing up in a small Catholic orphanage in Japan, where he had been left at the age of 10 days.

Born to Japanese parents, he was later adopted by a Japanese woman and an American soldier and became a naturalized citizen at the age of 12. He vowed as a young man to serve in the military of his new country.

Latimer questioned the claims that Navy training would damage state parklands, or that civilians would be the subject of military spying.

“It is a fact that a small group of five or six Navy SEALs stealthily walking through the woods are not going to have any more environmental impact than the over 39 million visitors we had in state parks in 2019,” Latimer said.

“You are under more surveillance with the use of your cellphone, your computer, your smart TV and other electronics that you have in your home and in your vehicles,” he added. “Corporate America knows more about you and your family, your credit history, your spending habits, your cell phone conversations, and your finances than the Navy SEALs could possibly ever learn through surveillance.”

SMALL FOOTPRINT

Commissioner Mark Brown said the Navy’s use of state parkland would only be allowed on approximately 6 percent of the developed park property owned by Washington State Parks, or about 8,500 acres out of 140,000 acres of land.

The decision was the toughest one he’s had since he has been on the commission, Brown added.

But he noted the detailed analysis done by state parks staff on the permit applications, and said the footprint of where the Navy could train was greatly reduced.

It was also limited by further restrictions added by the commission, which included limiting the Navy’s use of parkland for training to non-daytime hours. Brown said that would further reduce the chances of park visitors coming into contact with military training activities.

Brown also pointed out that nine of the parks identified for use by the Navy were former military installations, and that three or four others had history of military use.

“We’re talking about pre-Civil War forts. We’re talking about the Triangle of Fire up in Puget Sound,” Brown said, referring to the system of fortifications set up on the Olympic Peninsula and Whidbey Island that protect Admiralty Inlet.

Others noted that the military has been using Washington State Parks for 30 years, with no reports of negative interactions between park users and the military.

A long list of conditions were added to the Navy’s use of state parkland.

Real weapons cannot be used during training, but replica weapons would be allowed.

No training activity can start without a two-week notification to a park area manager, who is allowed to redirect or prohibit the proposed training for any reason.

Surveillance of members of the public was also prohibited, and buffers were imposed to keep the military from 500 to 1,000 feet away from camp areas and overnight accommodations.

The Navy is also required to report any training that has been held, with follow-up site visits by parks employees to make sure park properties have not been damaged.

Before the vote, Steve Brand of Washington State Parks said park officials had only learned of one time during past Navy training on state parkland that had caught the attention of the public. That incident happened during a nighttime training event at Illahee State Park in Kitsap County.

People in two boats at a moorage dock noticed lights in the water.

A vessel with Navy personnel who were monitoring the training approached the boaters and told them what was going on.

The boaters weren’t alarmed, Brand said.

“I think they were actually kind of entertained by the activity,” Brand said.

The training was allowed on a 4-3 vote after nearly two hours of review and discussion.

Voting “yes” were Commissioner Cindy Whaley, of Spokane; Commissioner Latimer, of Yakima; Commissioner Brown, of Lacey; and Commissioner Steve Milner, of Chelan.

Voting against were Commissioner Bounds, of Seattle; Commissioner Danenberg, of Seattle; and Commissioner Diana Perez, of Vancouver.

MANY OPPOSED TO PLAN

Hundreds of comments on the proposal were submitted before Thursday’s meeting.

Local governments, including the Jefferson County Board of County Commissioners, weighed in.

County commissioners wondered why the Navy needed to use parks in Jefferson County — seven were included in the training proposal — when the Navy owns thousands of acres and miles of shoreline in the Puget Sound and Hood Canal region.

Officials said Jefferson County is home to 11 Washington State Parks properties that were a major draw for visitors and “generates important revenue for our local businesses and county government” commissioners said in a Jan. 21 letter to the parks commission.

JeffCo commissioners asked the commission to “consider the cumulative impacts of military impacts to a small, rural region like ours.”

A recent Navy study on its Northwest training area showed 88 percent of that activity taking place in Jefferson County, Commissioner Kate Dean said in the letter.

“We ask you to consider the cumulative and increasing impacts from the Growler [jet] operations expansion at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, electronic warfare training operations in West Jefferson County, National Forests and Olympic National Park, the Toandos Buffer Zone, and the Dabob Bay Military Operating Area,” Dean wrote.

“We recognize the Navy as an important and beneficial neighbor, and we very much value its role in maintaining national security,” she added. “That said, the increasing impacts to our county from military training are done without sufficient and proportionate environmental or economic mitigation. Our tax base is not benefitted by having a residential installation like our neighbors in Kitsap or Island counties enjoy.”

Many residents of Whidbey Island criticized the Navy’s proposal to use state parks, and the Langley City Council and Coupeville Town Council also opposed the plan.

NAVY HAPPY WITH VOTE

“The Navy is pleased with the overall approval decision, and look forward to working with the parks, as we have for years, on a productive way forward,” said J. Overton, Deputy Public Affairs Officer for Navy Region Northwest, after the commission’s meeting.

Brand, of Washington State Parks, later said the number of 16 or 17 state parks that could host the meeting was a rough estimate.

“We don’t have a list yet, believe it or not,” Parks said in an email. “The number I gave was a rough estimate or an approximation to give the commission a magnitude of the effect of criteria. This was based on just a visual look at the GIS data but without analysis.”