Judge Blocks NC Navy Airfield

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

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Judge Blocks Navy's Plan for Airfield Near Flyway

By FELICITY BARRINGER
New York Times April 21, 2004

WASHINGTON, April 20 -- A federal judge in North Carolina has ordered
the Navy to halt its efforts to create a new landing field for training
pilots five miles from a large migratory bird refuge, pending further
court rulings.

In granting the preliminary injunction late Monday, the judge, Terrence
W. Boyle of Federal District Court, said the Navy "may have failed to
take a hard look at the environmental effects of its decision,"
particularly the effect of the noise from more than 30,000 annual
practice landings and the likelihood of bird-airplane collisions.

An inventory found more than 100,000 waterfowl wintering at the Pungo
Unit of the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, including 44,000
snow geese and 20,000 tundra swans, a quarter of the state population of
that arctic migratory bird.

The idea of placing the landing strip, known as an outlying landing
field, in the rural eastern community of Plymouth, has roiled residents
and environmental advocacy groups for at least two years. The Navy
argued that the field and adjacent property the it hoped to buy -- area
that straddles Washington and Beaufort Counties -- were ideally suited
to serve as a nighttime training site for pilots flying with the fleet
squadrons to be based at the Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia and
Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station in North Carolina.

...

for the entire story, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/21/politics/21BIRD.html

--


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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