The Rumbles will soon be even harder to ignore. The odd acoustic phenomenon that’s been noticeable mostly on the eastern side of the capital region for a few years is officially turning into an issue.
Two people at separate town-hall meetings hosted by Saanich-Gulf Islands MP Elizabeth May complained about the low-frequency rumbling noise that periodically washes through parts of Greater Victoria. It was enough to prompt May to make rumbling noises of her own — about pursuing various U.S. officials to turn down the volume.
My colleague Jack Knox has written several pieces about the mysterious noise over the past few years. He has waded through all sorts of explanations about the origin and the most favoured one seems to be the Whidbey Island U.S. Naval Air Station. It’s about 100 kilometres southwest of Victoria and a few minutes flying time by the Growler fighter jets that use the base to practise carrier landings.
There’s no official hard and fast link yet between the jets and the rumbles, but it’s the source people keep coming back to, and it’s the one that May said she will be focusing on. (They started well before Saanich Mayor Richard Atwell’s Monday afternoon news conference, so that particular explosion can be ruled out.)
The promise came after a woman complained at a Sunday afternoon town-hall meeting in Gordon Head about the “horrible, horrible noise problems.”
She said under certain conditions there is “an intolerable amount of noise.” Even with the doors closed and double-glazed windows, she said, it sounds like “the big one.”
(I’ve heard the rumbles for years and never found them to be more than a curiosity. But as any municipal councillor can tell you, noise complaints are in the ear of the beholder.)
“It seems to me that this is an issue of international relations,” said the constituent. “The American planes are having one heck of an impact.”
May said it was the second meeting in a row where the topic came up.
There was a window in a Washington state environmental approval process related to changes in operating procedures at the base through which Victorians could have registered complaints, but it is believed to have closed now.
But May said: “That doesn’t make it impossible for us to say the effect is unacceptable.”
The road map that May sketched out for how to deal with it looks to be an interesting one. It’s all about linkages.
May said she met some Washington state officials at the Lima Climate Change Conference last month and had high praise for their enlightened environmental outlook. If she’d known about the rumbles then, she would have raised the problem with them, she said.
But as a fallback, May said Washington state and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are intervenors in the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline approval process on this side of the border.
She read their involvement as being against the pipeline.
“So we can all just tell them we’ll do everything we can to keep oil spills, bitumen spills, from affecting the San Juan Islands and our part of the world. But we don’t want your jets.”
The position got a favourable response from the estimated 200 people at the meeting. She said she will push Canadian federal officials to work on the issue and enlist Green MLA Andrew Weaver, from Oak Bay-Gordon Head, as well.
“We need to make sure the U.S. knows this is not acceptable to Saanich-Gulf Islands and others affected by this noise.”
Just So You Know: If the Rumbles aren’t enough to raise Green party supporters’ suspicions about the U.S. military, check out the U.S. Forest Service website for environmental assessments. The U.S. Navy is proposing an Electronic Warfare Range in the Olympic National Forest. It involves some truck-mounted equipment at sites mostly on the other side of the Olympics mountain range from Victoria, which will carry “Electromagnetic Radiation Hazard” warning signs. It’s reportedly the first use of real electromagnetic radiation for training, rather than simulated versions. It got preliminary approval and might be operating by September.
