From Thursday's Mendocino Beacon, "Bush signs bill that could affect marine life":

Last week, President George Bush signed a defense authorization bill with a provision to allow the U.S. Navy to deploy Low Frequency Sonar (LFS). Funding for the bill was not included in the authorization of funding bill the president also signed last week.

In October, the Natural Resources Defense Council and co-plaintiffs won a two-year long lawsuit that stopped the Navy's use of LFS. Reference was made to the NRDC case in the bill. According to Rep. Mike Thompson's Washington, D.C. press secretary, Leslie Danz, some compromise was made in the bill to balance the use of LFS and its detrimental impact on marine life.

The Low Frequency Sonar system has been proven to cause whales, for example, to lose their echolocation ability and to suffer internal damage such as inner ear damage and bleeding and lung hemorrhage that has led to the mammals' deaths.

The courts agreed in the NRDC suit that science clearly demonstrates "the possibility, indeed probability, or irreparable injury" to marine mammals should the sonar system be deployed widely, and the reckless use of the system would violate a number of U.S. environmental laws.