[CPEO-MEF] ENCROACHMENT: Robins Air Force Base (GA) neighbor's opinion

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

YOUR SAY: Who's encroaching on whom?

OPINION BY BY DAVID O'LEARY
Macon Telegraph (GA)
July 16, 2010

The recent headline "Bibb, Houston form pact to buy land encroaching on 
Robins Air Force Base" (July 7) highlights how misunderstood is the term 
“encroachment.” The headline sounds silly because it is. Land does not 
encroach — we all know it's reasonably stationary. It is growing 
entities, whose purposes come into conflict with the purposes of other 
nearby entities, that are said to encroach. In the case of Robins, we 
have a burgeoning Air Force mission on an installation with almost no 
room to grow (witness G-RAMP), versus a small and diminishing number of 
homes north of the runway, most of which have been there for 20 years or 
more. I ask you: Who's encroaching on whom?

Interestingly, the term encroachment is primarily a description of the 
criminal act of infringing on the property rights of others, and the 
term was not found in the first Air Force AICUZ studies that identified 
the land-use conflict. The tone of those studies was much more 
congenial, much less hostile, than the current dialogue. "Encroachment" 
was applied later, in the 1990s. But it appears the Department of 
Defense, Air Force and local leaders, in assigning encroachment to south 
Bibb County rather than allowing the idea that Robins is encroaching, 
that is, growing beyond its available land, are effectively putting the 
shoe on the wrong foot.

...

For the entire column, see
http://www.macon.com/2010/07/16/1197129/whos-encroaching-on-whom.html

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
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


_______________________________________________
Military mailing list
Military@lists.cpeo.org
http://lists.cpeo.org/listinfo.cgi/military-cpeo.org