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U.S. Navy representatives got an earful of concerns Tuesday night in Ukiah when they presented details of a plan to increase military training and tests along the Pacific Coast from Washington to Northern California.

“For hundreds and hundreds of years you’ve been practicing (war),” said Mendocino Coast performance artist and anti-war activist Sherry Glaser-Love. “I think you’ve got it down.”

“Practice for peace,” she told the trio of Navy representatives led by John Mosher, an environmental project manager for the U.S. Navy.

Nearly 100 people attended the informational meeting, held at the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors chambers. The meeting was held to gather public comments on a pair of studies examining the environmental impacts of the Navy’s plan to increase training along the northern Pacific Coast.

Their concerns ranged from sonar’s effects on marine life to pollution and noisy jets.

The Northwest Training Range Complex is one of 13 Navy training and testing areas. It is comprised of individual areas that include 122,400 square nautical miles of ocean, 34,000 square miles of airspace and 875 acres of land.

The Navy wants to increase the number of training exercises in the area to ready troops for combat. The activities include airplane and submarine operations and testing of sonar, minefields and bombs.

About 90 percent of all the training exercises and testing takes place in Washington, much of it around Puget Sound where there is a Navy base, Navy officials said.

The Navy’s impact report admits the activities have adverse impacts on marine life, but doesn’t expect them to kill any marine mammals.

It does project that whales, porpoises, seals, sea turtles, fish, seabirds and marine invertebrates could be adversely impacted by sonar activities. Sonar testing has been linked to mass die-offs of whales.

The Navy training range has been in existence since at least World War II, Mosher said.

The training area’s southern end is Mendocino County’s northern border with Humboldt County. It does not extend into Mendocino County, Mosher said, attempting to clear up one of many apparent misinterpretations of the draft impact report.

Some people at the hearing were worried the Navy planned to extend its activities to the Bay Area because of a map designation officials admitted was a confusing attempt to provide area residents with a landmark.

“Are we next?” asked coast resident and publisher Beth Bosk.

There also was some confusion about who was responsible for low-flying jets that reportedly frightened residents and scattered livestock near Petrolia in southern Humboldt County. Brian Wauer, a project operations specialist with the Navy, said the Navy doesn’t fly jets in that area.

“They’re not part of this complex,” he said.

Issues of pollution from military activities, past and future, also were raised.

“Life began in the ocean. Life is now dying in the ocean,” said Antonia Lamb. “The Navy needs to clean up its mess.”

Mosher said the Navy knows it has made mistakes in the past. He said it’s working to clean up past pollution and to create cleaner technologies for the future.

“We value the environment we live in,” said Mosher, to snickers from the audience.

The U.S. Navy is accepting written and electronic comments on the environmental study until April 13.

Researcher Michele Van Hoeck contributed to this report. You can reach Staff Writer Glenda Anderson at 462-6473 or glenda.anderson@pressdemocrat.com