Project ELF RIP

In the face of public opposition, the Navy tried in vain to find less politically-charged sites elsewhere, including Texas, before returning to Wisconsin and Michigan with the streamlined Project Seafarer. Then President Carter stepped in and, heeding strong local opposition, had the Navy further scale down the proposed installation. The Navy returned with specs for the current assembly that remained shelved until Reagan assumed office. 

As Wisconsinites organized opposition to a proposed mine near Crandon—an opposition that finally won its epic battle a year ago— grassroots anti-ELF sentiments also spread through rural communities, eventually alerting Madison’s activist community. The northern economy, built around logging and tourism, was not predicted to breed insurgents. Activists worked to educate their neighbors throughout the state. Protests on-site began in 1981—eight years before the facility went on-line—with activists pulling survey stakes. Northern Wisconsin became a hotbed of protest. 

A 1971 Navy study determined that electromagnetic fields associated with ELF caused stunted growth in rats. The military sat on the details of these findings until 1976, even as concerned citizens worked to unearth information on potential health impacts of the ELF waves. The Navy convened the Ad Hoc Committee for the Review of Biomedical and Ecological Effects of ELF Radiation to analyze their research in 1973. The committee’s members raised concerns over potentially serious health problems related to the technology, though their worries carried little weight with militarists desiring a different message. The ad hoc committee’s findings only reached the public once Senator Gaylord Nelson, an environmentalist and progressive Democrat, raised a stink and released the report himself. 

The battle over “scientific findings” continued for years with the Navy searching for “experts” willing to vouch for ELF’s safety while the public’s suspicions grew. Various figures, such as Dr. Creig R. Kronstedt, released reports describing the potential impacts on humans, suggesting ways that low-frequency waves interfered with neural activity. Others suggested that “stray voltage” reduced milk production in dairy cows. Speculation proved ubiquitous and though few hard facts surfaced, public relations eclipsed the scientific pursuit of reliable information. To this day, anyone expressing concerns over health problems stemming from exposure to various forms of long-wave energy is likely to be denounced as a “conspiracy theorist.” In effect, the citizens occupying lands surrounding the Clam Lake and Republic installations served as human guinea pigs in a massive study of the long-term effects of electromagnetic radiation on living beings. 

In September 2001 the Lac Courte Oreilles band of Chippewa began pressuring the Navy to determine the nature and extent of health and environmental problems created by the antenna system. Holding treaty rights as their trump card, band officials argued that a minimal three million dollar would be needed for a study examining conditions such as cancer rates in the four-county area surrounding the project site. Navy spokesperson Richard Williamson told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that testing would be money wasted as 5 universities in proximity to the Great Lakes had already spent $25 million on research that identified no major effects from the ELF antenna. 

The Navy required their detractors to provide the burden of proof that the system caused health problems. Such a burden would require an incredible investment of time and money, two luxuries least available to the working people of the northern Midwest. Whenever evidence surfaced of alleged health effects, the Navy countered with the required contradictory message. 

Ultimately, the Navy—like pharmaceutical companies or food purveyors—should have been forced to prove their system’s safety. But the Navy’s secrecy, alongside their perceived need to implement Project ELF, prevented them from assuming an ethically responsible role. Though both sites were shut down on September 30, resulting cancers and other health problems may not surface for some years with victims unable to trace their misfortune to the antenna. 

During the debate over the 1996 Senate Defense Appropriations bill, Wisconsin’s two senators, Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl, succeeded in getting the Senate to pass an amendment putting an end to Project ELF. Hawks such as Rep. Bill Young of Florida (R-FL) and Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) restored funding in a joint House-Senate conference, stressing ELF’s role in national security. A year later, Feingold, who had fought the antenna installation diligently on the Senate floor for years, introduced a bill to end the project, that was costing up to $15 million every year. 

The State of Wisconsin also fought Project ELF. In 1984, Wisconsin won a lawsuit against the U.S. Navy. Federal Judge Barbara Crabb ordered the site decommissioned but an appeals court overturned the finding, ruling in favor of the Navy and keeping the facility operational.

The Clam Lake site became a Mecca for anti-nuclear activists with notable protests and numerous arrests making the front pages of newspapers throughout the region for decades. Since 1991, more than 500 arrests have been made on the ELF site. For example, on Sunday, August 8, 1999—a recurring date for protest chosen in memory of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—a dozen protesters from a crowd of 65 were arrested for trespassing on the site. Many participants had endured a 4-day, 53-mile peace trek from the courthouse in Ashland, Wisconsin where legal battles over ELF and protesters’ rights had also waged for decades. 

Bonnie Urfer, a local activist working with the group Nuke- watch, said that Ashland County stopped issuing trespassing tickets in 2000, leaving the federal government to take up the slack. In later protests, Forest Service officials, having jurisdiction over the National Forest lands, issued tickets, adding meaning to their agency’s popular description of federal forests, “Land of Many Uses.” 

A dozen protesters in 2003 wound up in federal court in Madison on trespassing charges, each fined $150. Federal Magistrate Stephen Crocker, threatening jail time to repeat offenders, sentenced Duluth resident Michelle Naar-Obed to 30 days in a federal prison. Naar-Obed, who has a history of civil disobedience, informed the magistrate that she had recently witnessed the direct consequences of militarization upon the innocents of Iraq and suggested he avoid placing his “judicial stamp of approval” on such acts. Crocker reminded Naar-Obed that the court did not determine whether or not military actions are correct. 

When activists found a way to take the antenna assembly off-line, protests took on a whole new meaning. In 2000, two Luck, Wisconsin residents, Urfer and Michael Sprong, cut down three poles with hand-held saws. They patiently awaited law enforcement to take them into custody. Urfer and Sprong were the fifth team to cripple the multi-million dollar device with tools available for less than ten dollars in any hardware store. 

To counter Project ELF, Nukewatch formed in 1979 in the small town of Luck. The group organized regular anti-ELF actions while also carefully monitoring shipments of nuclear materials throughout the United States by train, truck, and other vehicles. 

Urfer explains that, despite the closing, Nukewatch’s activists have “mixed emotions” over the Navy’s announcement. “Most people are extremely skeptical of the reasons that the Navy gave,” she reports, noting several more credible reasons for the Navy’s abandoning the sites. Speculation centers on the belief the Navy wishes to appear frugal to improve its chances of garnering more funding for operations in the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, plus any potential incursions into Iran, Syria, North Korea, or elsewhere. Some think that the Navy finally realized that the ELF site proved too vulnerable, so leaders opted for a higher number of low-frequency installations around the globe. 

Others believe that another related technology, developed in the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, with its misleading acronym HAARP, may prove more effective in communicating with their underwater fleet. The HAARP website appears to justify the suspicions with its self-description: “HAARP is a scientific endeavor aimed at studying the properties and behavior of the ionosphere, with particular emphasis on being able to understand and use it to enhance communications and surveillance systems for both civilian and defense purposes.” 

Urfer, asked to estimate the affect Nukewatch’s peaceful protests had on the Navy’s decision, minces no words. “I think our part in it’s probably zero,” she offers, adding, “We’re not even spit in the bucket when it comes to a campaign in this country.” She notes that other actions, including the fight to close the School of the Americas, dwarf Nukewatch’s actions in Wisconsin. But, Urfer adds, Nukewatch has planty of potential actions ahead.