Sallie “Spirit” Harrison of Snohomish County is preparing for a 200-mile protest walk across the North Olympic Peninsula, with the first leg beginning Sunday.
During her “Walk for the Olympics,” Harrison, who lives in an unincorporated area of Snohomish County — across Puget Sound from the Peninsula — and says she owns property in Brinnon, hopes to inspire more comments on a Navy proposal to conduct electronic warfare training on the West End.
“I am protesting the Navy’s expansion and especially what it is going to do to the Olympic Peninsula,” said Harrison, 59, on Thursday.
“It will ruin tourism as well as the environment, so it is a very big issue for everybody there.”
Harrison said her trek, which she intends to do wearing bright pink, is inspired by her memories of the protests of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and ’70s that she participated in as a teenager.
“We [went] out by the hundreds of thousands of people . . . and had huge rallies,” she said.
Now, she says, “we have the right to speak up, and we have the right to limit our military.”
Said Navy spokesman Chris Haley: “We encourage everybody to get involved.
“We would support all Americans to get involved.”
Harrison plans a kickoff parade with a few supporters from around Puget Sound, including Port Townsend, at 1 p.m. Sunday with a kickoff parade on Whidbey Island, she said.
The parade route is to be from the Keystone ferry dock to Crockett Barn in Ebey’s Reserve at 162 Cemetery Road about a mile away. She plans a kickoff party and potluck from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Her itinerary is to leave from the Port Townsend ferry dock at 10 a.m. Monday; reach Sequim in time for the Open Aire Market on Saturday, June 13; visit the Port Angeles Farmers Market on Saturday, June 20; and reach Lake Quinault on June 27.
The trip is not a walk for pleasure, she said.
“I am not a spring chicken. I am almost 60,” Harrison said.
“Walking about 8 to 10 miles a day is a little bit of a stretch for me, but I am very happy to try and do it.”
The Navy has proposed an $11.5 million expansion of electronic-warfare-range activities on the Olympic Peninsula using EA-18G Growler crews stationed at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island.
The Navy has requested a permit from the U.S. Forest Service to deploy three mobile, camper-sized electromagnetic transmitters on 12 Olympic National Forest logging roads in Clallam and Jefferson counties and Grays Harbor County.
The crews would target electromagnetic radiation from emitters affixed to up to three camper-sized vehicles that would move from site to site.
A flood of public comments has pushed back the Navy’s target date for the project from September to early 2016.
The U.S. Forest Service, which had said a decision on a Navy request for a permit would be made by September, is hiring a third-party contractor to handle the 3,314 comments it received in response to the Navy’s special-use permit application.
That will push the Forest Service decision to early 2016, agency spokesman Glen Sachet has said.
The Navy also originally had said it would seek a permit from the state Department of Natural Resources to use three sites on state land in West Jefferson County.
Peter Goldmark, state commissioner of public lands, said this past spring that DNR isn’t interested in allowing its land to be used for electronic warfare training.
The Navy has said the radiation would not impact people or wildlife, partly because the trucks’ antennas would emit radiation straight up into the sky.
Harrison believes the radiation and noise from the jets will have a detrimental effect on the environment as well as people and animals.
For those wondering, Harrison was given the nickname “Spirit” in junior high.
“I like to use that name because it is kind of cute,” she said.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Chris McDaniel can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or cmcdaniel@peninsuladailynews.com.
Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb contributed to this report.
