This story was originally published on LincolnChronicle.org and is used with permission.
When U.S. Department of Justice attorneys appear in federal court Monday in Eugene, they will argue that Newport Fishermen’s Wives, Lincoln County and the state of Oregon shouldn’t be allowed to interfere in routine and temporary operations as to when, where and how the Coast Guard deploys its rescue helicopters.
Portland-based assistant U.S. attorneys representing the Department of Homeland Security say that while the Coast Guard is following a Nov. 24 court order to return a rescue helicopter to Newport, it will remain there only through next spring when the agency “will assess its resources for the summer season as it has for the past several years” and may request permission to consolidate resources in North Bend.
That assertion in a 36-page document filed late Friday in U.S. District Court comes despite the Coast Guard’s acting commandant assuring Oregon’s two U.S. senators last week that the much-disputed helicopter would stay in Newport.
The helicopter was moved 70 miles south to North Bend in October, prompting lawsuits by Newport Fisherman’s Wives, the county and state who argued the Coast Guard did not follow congressionally-required notice and that the move imperils Newport’s fishing fleet as it begins the 2025-26 crabbing season.
The helicopter’s move took on added controversy to many in the area when the Coast Guard began moving equipment out of its facility and a Texas military contractor asked the city of Newport if it would lease adjacent airport land for what could be Oregon’s only federal immigration detention center.
U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken has scheduled a hearing Monday afternoon on her temporary restraining order that required the Coast Guard to return the helicopter to Newport.
But it wasn’t until late Friday that federal attorneys laid out reasons for the helicopter’s move, details of how the Newport- and North Bend-based aircrafts operate, and why the three plaintiffs shouldn’t be allowed to interfere with the Coast’s Guard’s operations.
“Coast Guard helicopters … are a scarce resource which the Coast Guard must constantly adjust and reassess how they are employed,” the federal attorneys argued. “While this case may appear to implicate just one helicopter using one air facility, it impacts the operational readiness of the parent unit, Air Station North Bend, as well as the Coast Guard’s ability to meet its mission requirements across Coast Guard Northwest District and the Pacific Area.”
The attorneys laid out in great detail how the Newport air facility and helicopter have been operating since 2019, how the North Bend facility has just two operational helicopters out of the five it is assigned, and until September there was a temporary shortage of qualified air crews.
Before it was ordered back to Newport, attorneys also said the helicopter was moved to North Bend because one of the two remaining there was needed in San Diego to help with a Coast Guard immigration enforcement operation.
Because it needs to allocate scarce resources, the federal attorneys said, the Coast Guard had since 2019 changed how it uses its Newport facility by stationing one petty officer there and flying four-member crews in from North Bend to respond to emergencies. It also said improvements in communications, technology and small boat capabilities at Yaquina Bay and Depoe Bay “have significantly improved search and rescue operations along the Oregon coast.”
But attorneys said operations in Newport were reduced from May through September because of the lack of qualified crews and a shortage of helicopters in North Bend. Still, they said, North Bend crews regularly used the Newport airport throughout the summer for training with lifeboat crews and often stayed there overnight.
Attorneys said while staffing issues and training were resolved in North Bend, the need to move one of its two functioning helicopters to San Diego necessitated the temporary transfer of the Newport aircraft. Attorneys said the Coast Guard always planned to return it to Newport by the start of the crab season in mid-December.
Other arguments by federal attorneys included:
- Helicopters from North Bend and Astoria are capable of reaching the Newport-area within the Coast Guard’s two-hour response standard. It also cited a Coast Guard water rescue expert by saying that “Under typical conditions found off the Oregon coast, even an individual in summer clothing would be functionally able to assist in their rescue within two hours of entering the water.”
- The plaintiff’s assertion that the Coast Guard did not follow notification procedures mandated by 2014 congressional rules are outside the statute of limitations because those changes started in 2019 and procedures were followed then, including notifying the county and Newport Fishermen’s Wives.
- The transfer of the Newport helicopter to North Bend is not a final agency action, but was only to address the shortage of qualified air crews during the summer and extended for a month in October because of the aircraft shortage in San Diego. “By no means was that deployment a final decision concerning the closure of Air Facility Newport,” the document said.
- That there is only a 30-minute difference in response times between a helicopter being flown from Newport and one flying from North Bend, and according to Coast Guard Capt. Kent Reinhold “of all the Coast Guard air stations … Astoria, Newport and North Bend are the closest together across the whole of the Coast Guard in terms of range capability.”
The U.S. attorneys finished their argument by saying if Aiken orders the Coast Guard to maintain a helicopter in Newport the result would leave one operational helicopter in North Bend and that the Newport aircraft “would be unable to serve North Bend’s coverage area, thereby placing southern Oregonians at a greater risk.”
They argued that the Coast Guard needs the flexibility to move personnel and equipment where most needed “whether it is to respond to a terrorist attack or national disaster or to send a helicopter to a mariner in distress …”
“If the Coast Guard is unable to move the helicopter under any circumstances from Air Facility Newport, there is a real danger when helicopters at other air stations are without resources,” they argued. “Only if the Coast Guard can appropriately allocate its limited resources can the American public’s safety be ensured.”
