White Elephant invades Hood Canal

It's official!!!  The Navy has finally finished going through the motions (known as "window dressing" in the old school) to push through a major boondoggle known as the Second Explosives Handling Wharf.  And just in time no less; the Navy needs to get started on this project so it does not lose any of the funding - Can you say TAXPAYER DOLLARS??? - that Congress so generously set aside (ah, the smell of a mess-o-bacon being cooked up).

The Second Wharf is quite simply an unneccesary project.  As retired Navy Captain Tom Rogers put it:

"If our national leaders make good on their stated intention to substantially reduce the numbers of [nuclear] weapons, then 5 years from now when the wharf is finished, it will be a useless white elephant.”

If you think the Navy's Second Explosives Handling Wharf should not be built click here to sign our petition at Change.org.

(Petition URL: http://www.change.org/petitions/the-u-s-senate-defund-the-bangor-wharf-to-nowhere)

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Second explosives handling wharf gets final approval

• By Kitsap Sun staff
• Kitsap Sun
• Posted May 18, 2012 at 11:16 a.m.

BANGOR — The Navy issued a Record of Decision Friday for a second explosives handling wharf at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor. It's the final step in the environmental process before construction of the $715 million facility can begin.

A public notice states the Navy weighed the purpose and need of the facility, environmental consequences and public comments, and selected its preferred alternative — a combined-trestle, large-pile wharf. It says it will fully support future requirements of Trident submarines homeported at the base and the Trident II (D5) strategic weapons system.

A $331 million contact was awarded on May 10 to a Virginia joint venture for the over-water work, including a covered slip, a warping wharf and trestled roads. Not part of that contract but included in the project is the hardening of about 15 structures and demolishing five to comply with requirements to protect buildings near explosives handling operations, three new buildings and environmental mitigation.

The Navy says the second wharf is needed because the existing one is undergoing a pile-replacement program and requires a lot of maintenance that limits its ability to support the base's eight Trident ballistic-missile submarines.

An electronic copy of the Record of Decision can be viewed at www.nbkeis.com/EHW.

Article source URL: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2012/may/18/second-explosives-handling-wharf-gets-final/#ixzz1vIHHGFoL