"Super Hornet's Nest"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

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Plan for Landing Strip Turns Into a Super Hornet's Nest

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post
May 2, 2004


WENONA, N.C. -- Even people who adore the mushy expanses of the Pocosin
Lakes National Wildlife Refuge admit it can be a mighty inhospitable
place when the eastern North Carolina days turn steamy. Mosquitoes rule
the air, and only a fool would tromp among the loblolly bays without
snake chaps to fend off the rattlers.

But winter is a time of transcendent beauty here, a time when the very
surface of Pungo Lake, on the edge of the refuge, appears to lift into
the air in sudden, shuddering, spectacular bursts. Massive flocks of
migrating snow geese and tundra swans camp on the lake for months at a
time, grazing on the tender tops of winter wheat and the sweet corn laid
out in abundance in the nearby fields.

The farmers are so accustomed to the swooping and high-pitched honking
that they joke about "tithing" 10 percent of their crop to their winter
visitors for the right to do business next to one of the East Coast's
most stunning annual nature shows. Mortal enemies in most places, the
farmers and the birds are stitched together as allies here in the land
that the Algonquin Indians called "the swamp on the hill," in what is
fast becoming one of the most contentious ecological battles in the country.

The nemesis of the farmers and the bird-loving environmentalists is as
formidable as they come: the U.S. Navy. The Navy is making an appeal to
patriotism and arguing that it is justified in buying -- or, if need be,
seizing -- more than 30,000 acres of farmland near the refuge to build a
landing strip to polish the skills of pilots for its snazziest new crop
of planes, the supersonic F/A-18E/F Super Hornets. The landing strip
would be the first major new Navy facility since the 1960s and would
break ground at a time when bases across the country are closing.

...

for the entire story, see
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59730-2004May1.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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