What good is a program that is grossly irresponsible and misleading? In a recent Whidbey News Times editorial Capt. Matt Arny, commander of Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, addressed the military’s Air Installations Compatible Use Zone (AICUZ) Program and the base’s often controversial training activities.

He correctly notes that the AICUZ purpose is to serve as “a land use planning tool…[that] works long-term with local communities to address incompatible land uses.” He further discusses the most problematic Navy activity on Whidbey Island—i.e., low-level, unhealthily loud EA-18G Growler flight carrier landing practice, commonly thought of as touch-and-go practice.

The AICUZ program’s mission is, indeed, to ensure that military bases do not create conflicts with surrounding civilian land uses, and it requires the military clearly and forthrightly detail its intended long-range plans for activities that could impact communities. That is supposed to enable local governments, like Island County, to plan and facilitate compatible land-uses that preclude encroachment problems.

The most recent AICUZ was in 2005. It largely focused on how many of those landing practice “operations” the County and Coupeville should anticipate and plan to accommodate in facilitating land uses.

That specific number was 6120 annual operations at Outlying Field Coupeville, which Island County, the town of Coupeville, and the residents of Central Whidbey accepted in good faith and relied on as “the” number to use for planning in areas adjacent to the flight paths—in other words, most of the Coupeville area.

Relying on that 2005 AICUZ direction, residential, commercial, and public facilities development proceeded accordingly and relatively unabated over the past 13 years, including new homes, the Island County Transit depot, Ryan’s House Hope for Kids, the new wing at Whidbey Health, to name just a few.

Then, in midsummer of 2018 the Navy announced that it now intends to conduct 23,700 landing practice operations annually at Outlying Field Coupeville, a 4-fold increase from the commitment of 6120 operations. If implemented, this will drastically upend and nullify 13 years of land-use planning and development that relied in good faith on that 2005 commitment.

In its reliance upon the 2005 AICUZ, Island County planning did not need to consider downzoning or implementing “accident potential zones” or withholding building permits and restricting development in the areas around Outlying Field Coupeville because the 2005 AICUZ did not call for accident zones. Now, 13 years later, it will.

The increase in noise and implementation of accident zones in Coupeville will inflict enormous damage on property values and the county budget will likewise suffer because of a diminished tax base, as well as create a residential upheaval and exodus of the area.

The proposed 4-fold explosion to 23,700 operations makes a mockery of the 2005 AICUZ that misled the public’s time and County dollars spent in crafting appropriate land uses, and it reveals total disregard for the private and public monies spent in developing properties and uses. It would change the culture of Central Whidbey Island by devastating property owners, businesses, tourism, wildlife, and appreciation of our historic properties. Not surprisingly, this new proposal is generating widespread and community discord and understandable anger.

On a national scale, it raises serious questions about the credibility and value of the AICUZ program and points to a need for congressional review and oversight. What good does it do any military community to rely in good faith on an AICUZ that fails its mission so drastically and capriciously unravels 13 years of progress?

Because of this serious abuse of public trust, and the enormous waste of county and taxpayer dollars, we have formally asked our Island County Commissioners and other political leaders to demand that the Navy honor its 2005 commitment to this community of no more than 6120 annual operations at Outlying Field Coupeville. That is the necessary first step in resolving the Growler problems in central Whidbey and restoring trust.

Submitted for Citizens of Ebey’s Reserve (COER), Post Office Box 202, Coupeville WA 98239

by Maryon Atwood, President