Navy to add S.C. site to sonar range list

Area off N.C. coast still a top contender

Navy officials plan to add a site in South Carolina to the list of three locations being considered for an underwater sonar range to train sailors in anti-submarine warfare.

The new site will be among those included in an environmental study, which will be released next spring.

But it doesn't mean a 660-square-mile site off the coast of North Carolina is out of contention. The span of ocean about 50 miles offshore from Camp Lejeune remains the Navy's preferred site to sharpen sailors' skills in using sonar to detect submarines.

"As of right now, that is still the preferred site," Jim Brantley, a spokesman for Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk, said Friday. "That may change in the revised version."

The Navy says that quieter diesel submarines pose a threat to American ships and that more realistic training is needed for the Atlantic fleet. The revised draft study will analyze a site off the coast of central South Carolina, in addition to the North Carolina site, plus waters off northeastern Virginia and northeastern Florida.

The underwater range, to be built over a 10-year period at an estimated cost of $98 million, would provide a grid of hundreds of underwater microphones anchored on the ocean floor that would record ship movements and allow training exercises at depths of 120 to 900 feet.

After the Navy issued a draft study in 2005, environmental groups said the military hadn't adequately considered the harm that sonar training could cause to marine mammals, including the endangered right whale. Fishermen said the planned sonar exercises might hurt their livelihoods.

Brantley said the new study will use new scientific research to consider the impact that sonar could have on marine life.