Public comment is being taken until Aug. 3 on the proposed reduction from full-time to seasonal status of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Station Milford Haven.

The proposed seasonal status was made public in a Gazette-Journal article last week, and Lt. Cmdr. Katherine M. Blue, Public Affairs Officer at U.S. Coast Guard Mid-Atlantic Region, Portsmouth, said the Coast Guard did not provide notice about the planned downgrade in the Federal Register and contacted only one Mathews official about it, Mathews County Board of Supervisors’ chairman Mike Rowe.

Blue said in an email that the reason for the limited notification was that the station is not being consolidated with another station, and therefore won’t be closed completely. The plan is to redistribute boats to other stations, she said, “which will increase training opportunities for personnel, improve proficiency, and enhance operational readiness.”
Blue provided a chart with the number of search and rescue operations Station Milford Haven conducted last year, a total of 47. There were six cases each in the months of June, July, August, and December; five in October; four each in April and September; three each in January and November, and two each in March and May. There were no search and rescue cases in February 2020.

Public comment on the proposed downgrade of Station Milford Haven may be made online at www.regulations.gov/docket/USCG-2021-0238.

Coast Guard statement

“The Coast Guard remains confident in our ability to respond year-round while incorporating the plan to seasonalize Station Milford Haven,” Blue said. “The Coast Guard is committed to the safety and well-being of all those who use the nation’s waterways and did not make the decision to seasonalize STA Milford Haven without serious consideration.”
Blue said that when Station Milford Haven is closed for the season, the local area, including the Piankatank and Rappahannock rivers, will be covered by Station Cape Charles, while the upper reaches of the territory, near Reedville, will be covered by Station Crisfield in Maryland. These stations, plus Station Portsmouth, all are equipped with “the modern 45-foot response boat medium, which can transit at speed in excess of 40 knots,” she said. In addition, aircraft responding from either Air Station Elizabeth City or Air Station Atlantic City will also meet Coast Guard Search and Rescue standards, she said.

The process

According to the Government Accountability Office’s 2017 study of the Coast Guard’s methods and process for determining whether stations should be closed, GAO-18-9, the Coast Guard’s caseload nationally has decreased significantly, from about 32,000 cases per year in 2004 to about 17,000 in 2016, underscoring the need for “optimal location of stations.” It projects a saving of $290 million over a 20-year period with the proposed actions.

There have been discussions since 1990 about cutting down on the number of stations that have overlapping service areas, said the report. In some areas, as many as four stations overlap each other’s areas of coverage, and the Coast Guard has sought to decrease that overlap. But the agency has met with resistance from local communities that would be impacted if stations were closed.

After an analysis of all stations, the Coast Guard in 2013 identified 18 stations that had overlap and that could be closed without compromising its standard of arriving on the scene of a search and rescue case within two hours of receiving a distress call. The analysis also identified stations that could meet the standard by being open seasonally rather than year-round. Milford Haven was one of those stations.

By law, the Coast Guard’s own analysis had to be followed up with a study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which then issued its own report confirming the Coast Guard’s findings (GAO-18-9). The report states that the Coast Guard did not consider responses by air stations in its decision-making, but did take into consideration such factors as boat downtime and surge capacity.

The report said further that “Coast Guard officials stated that seasonal closures are preferable to no action, given its limited resources, the significant overlapping SAR coverage, and potential to improve operations.”

Local response

Blue said that when Rowe was notified about the agency’s intention to operate the station only six months out of the year, he had not expressed any specific concerns about it.

During an interview this week, Rowe said he couldn’t find the notification from the Coast Guard and that he had been having issues with his email.

Rowe said he didn’t think the downgrade will have significant impact because the decline in the commercial fishing industry means there aren’t as many boats on local waters in the winter as there used to be. However, for those rescues that will need to be made, he said, even the closest station, Cape Charles, is 13 or 14 miles away by water and could take a considerable amount of response time, especially in bad weather.

Rowe added that he didn’t understand the reason for the downgrade. Since the station will still have to be maintained year-round, personnel there will just be relocated, “I don’t see where they’ll save money,” he said. Not only that, but he said that having the station closed for six months annually will have some impact on the local economy.

Local residents also expressed concern about the planned downgrade of the station. Ray Procopio of Cobbs Creek spoke out last week about the impact such a reduction in services would have on boating safety, protecting local commerce from drug activity and pollution, and the response time to a person in distress.

Gene Foster of Mathews, a merchant mariner, said he didn’t see how the Coast Guard’s Portsmouth station would be able to respond in a timely fashion to emergency situations in the large territory covered by Milford Haven. While not as many workboats are on the water in the winter as there were in the past, he said, people do fish for rockfish and oysters in the winter. And even though the Coast Guard’s capabilities have increased with faster boats and new technology, he said it will take Portsmouth too long to respond to areas as far away as the Potomac and the upper reaches of the Rappahannock and York rivers.

“If a sailboat runs up on a jetty, do we say, ‘that’s just too bad?’” Foster said. “If you need help, two hours is a long time. And isn’t the Coast Guard still under the Department of Homeland Security? Why in the world are we cutting them back? They’re not going to cut back on taxes; why cut back on the service?”

Shawn Coyne of Gloucester said he was concerned about watermen and women who rely on the Coast Guard base in an emergency.

“The increase in response time that will occur when we rely on stations much farther away poses a risk to life and limb of our area’s largest industry,” he said.

The station

According to BMC Joshua Menges, Chief at Station Milford Haven, the station supports 28 active crew members and 12 reserve members, while the adjacent Aids to Navigation team, which is a separate unit, has eight members.

Crew members live in various localities in the area, said Menges, with 10 of them on duty at a time. They work rotating shifts in which they stay at the station for 48 hours to 72 hours at a time, eating, sleeping, working out, and carrying on their lives. The standard schedule is for one team to work Monday and Tuesday, be off Wednesday and Thursday, and work Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, while the other team is doing exactly the opposite: taking off Monday and Tuesday, working Wednesday and Thursday, and taking off Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The following week, the crews switch.

Menges has been at Milford Haven since June 2018, and he’s scheduled to transfer out of the four-year billet next year.