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Dan Seals Asks: Where was our Congressman While the Coast Guard Planned Live Fire?

Novembe 1, 2006

WILMETTE, Ill . -- Tenth Congressional District candidate Dan Seals has sent a statement to the Coast Guard, requesting an environmental review and more public hearings about its Live Fire program in the Great Lakes.

"We all agree that we need strategies to protect (our region) from terrorist threats" given the presence of 13 nuclear power plants along the Great Lakes, Seals said in his statement. "However, residents of the 10th District are understandably concerned about the Coast Guard's plans to conduct live-fire practice on Lake Michigan."

Seals, who wondered why we in the district had not been informed about the Live Fire program until a Michigan Congressman called attention to it, asked for reassurances from the Coast Guard that care would be taken to alert boaters and for a thorough evaluation of the environmental impact.

Lake Michigan has the greatest number of target zones of all the Great Lakes: 14, according to the Coast Guard's Web site. One of the zones runs between Waukegan and Highland Park, which are in the 10th District. The lake with the next highest number of zones is Lake Superior, with seven.

Under the program, each zone would be closed to the public three to four times a year for four to six hours at a time when Coast Guard personnel would conduct live-fire training exercises with small-caliber machine guns, according to the Coast Guard.

Following the 9/11 attacks, the Coast Guard was transferred to the Department of Homeland Security and assumed increased security responsibilities, according to the Web site.

The Coast Guard scheduled nine public hearings this fall in response to public demand.

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