[CPEO-MEF] North Carolina's OLF and the battler over Super Hornets

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

OLF caught in one-two punch

By BILL SANDIFER
Washington Daily News (NC)
October 8, 2005

Florida won round one, Virginia, round two, and eastern North 
Carolinians hold ringside seats.

Round two of the Base Realignment and Closure battle apparently has gone 
to Virginia, in a heavyweight bout pitting Florida and Gov. Jeb Bush 
against Virginia and two Warners, governor and senator.

Florida’s first-round victory saw a BRAC Commission decision place 
seemingly impossible mandates on Virginia, mandates that must be met by 
March to avoid a wholesale dispatching of Naval Air Station Oceana’s 
Super Hornet inventory to the former NAS Cecil Field near Jacksonville.

Following such a move, the controversial outlying landing field the Navy 
has proposed for Washington and Beaufort counties would likely follow 
the money to Florida as well. Cecil Field has its own OLF.

Florida’s BRAC pitch had painted a picture of Cecil Field, a former Navy 
jet base, as unencumbered by the dense development that now crowds 
Oceana. Florida indicated to the BRAC board the field is just waiting to 
re-emerge as a virtually ideal Navy training facility.

But there’s a fly in the ointment, reported The Florida Times-Union 
Tuesday: Many of the pine forests reported to lie beneath flight paths 
departing the former Cecil Field have houses under them — about 900 by 
the paper’s account — houses that could put fighter pilots in the same 
straits they now must navigate in Virginia. Flight patterns around 
Oceana have been modified to reduce neighborhood noise and minimize 
risks to residents living in crash zones.

Eastern North Carolina opponents of proposed Washington-Beaufort OLF had 
counted on a BRAC decision leading to Oceana’s realignment as a solution 
to the lingering, noisome OLF issue. The vote to relocate Super Hornet 
squadrons to a near-perfect facility on the East Coast just down the 
road from Virginia held promise, particularly in light of Virginia U.S. 
Sen. John Warner’s calls for a fast track on the eastern North Carolina 
OLF. That call has local residents bristling.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.wdnweb.com/articles/2005/10/08/news/news02.txt
--
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
http://www.cpeo.org
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