[USN in NC]"We got everything from tree-huggers to gun

[Lonestar]

Interesting story from North Carolina...I had heard of it before, but first I've seen it in a Major Newspaper.

Los Angeles Times
May 7, 2007

Navy Plans Don't Fly With Folks In North Carolina

Critics in this pro-military state say a proposed jet landing field would threaten property rights and the environment.

By David Zucchino, Times Staff Writer

PIKE ROAD, N.C. — The Navy wants every last one of Gerald Allen's 1,168 acres of corn, soybeans and wheat along the T.G. "Sonnyboy" Joyner Highway.

It wants all 1,000 acres of C.E. and Maurice Manning's rich blacklands, farmland their great-grandfather first plowed and planted in the 1880s using a horse and a mule as collateral.

The Navy also wants the flat coastal land where Donald Stotesberry runs an air park that provides crop-spraying planes for local farmers. It wants his house and yard too.

The federal government seeks to seize this and much more, 30,000 acres in all, for a pilot training facility in rural eastern North Carolina — swallowing up family farms and threatening the tranquillity of the vast Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.

In raucous protest, farmers recently drove their tractors and combines to a Navy-sponsored hearing on the proposed 8,000-foot runway, which would be used to train F/A-18 Super Hornet jet pilots to land on aircraft carriers.

"The Navy's acting like a bully," said Dennis Bowen, 47, who stands to lose 100 acres of farmland cleared by his grandfather half a century ago.

Joining the farmers in opposing the plan is an unlikely alliance that includes conservative property rights advocates, liberal environmentalists, the National Rifle Assn., the NAACP, hunters, bird-watchers and retired military veterans.

"We got everything from tree-huggers to gun nuts," one farmer joked.

The proposed site is five miles from the Pocosin Lakes refuge, winter home to more than 100,000 migratory water birds. The area encompasses the world's only wild population of endangered red wolves, as well as bald eagles.

Environmentalists say potential collisions between big migratory birds and Super Hornet jets threaten both the birds and the pilots. Noise and pollution from the Navy's projected 32,000 practice flights a year, 24 hours a day, would degrade animal habitats and foul waterways, they say.

Other opponents say the Outlying Landing Field, or OLF, would undermine a struggling local economy by threatening family farms and a growing ecotourism industry. They say it would lower the quality of life for hunters, anglers and residents along the "inner banks" estuaries west of the Outer Banks.

The Navy says it needs the runway for deployment responsibilities that have expanded since the Sept. 11 attacks. To properly train pilots, it says, it needs large expanses of thinly populated land with few lights to interfere with nighttime landings and takeoffs.

The Pocosin Lakes site best meets the Navy's needs among the five it has considered in the region, the service says. "Why not go to a different site? Show us a better site that meets the Navy criteria," said Navy spokesman Ted Brown.

The proposed landing field is roughly halfway between Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia, where Super Hornets are now based, and Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, which would get 24 of the jets under the OLF plan. Pilots train now on an 8,000-foot runway at Fentress Naval Auxiliary Landing Field in Chesapeake, Va., near Oceana. Creeping suburbanization and "light pollution" made expanding that site unworkable, the Navy says.

Even in this pro-military, Republican-leaning state that is home to two major military bases — Ft. Bragg and Camp Lejeune — the twin threats to the environment and property rights have ignited a grass-roots rebellion.

"You've got the NAACP and the NRA on the same side," said Roy Armstrong, a retiree who lives in tiny Bath, N.C. "The only people for it are the Navy, and nobody's buying their bull."

The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People is involved because Washington County, where 80% of the site would be located, is 50% black. And 20% of county residents live below the poverty line.

The state's senators, Republicans Elizabeth Dole and Richard M. Burr, oppose the plan. So does Democratic Gov. Michael F. Easley, who has asked Congress to block $10 million in funding for the project, saying "wide swaths" of North America would be affected because the waterfowl migrate from Alaska and western Canada.

The director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has raised objections. Hundreds of North Carolinians have signed petitions, organized protests and created websites in opposition. Protest signs have sprouted on yards as far away as Chapel Hill, 150 miles from the site.

At two recent standing-room-only hearings in Washington and Plymouth, the biggest North Carolina towns surrounding the site, residents and elected officials confronted four stoic Navy officers.

"A snow job," Washington Park Mayor Thomas Richter told the officers, referring to the Navy's public relations offensive.

"Unbelievable arrogance," said Tommy Thompson, a Beaufort County economic development chairman, as the officers shifted in their seats.

"Shame on you," Plymouth Town Council Member Mary Ann Byers said, staring hard at the officers. "You've truly disgraced your uniforms."

Tony Price, a retired Air Force veteran, said: "I'm embarrassed for you good people … and I'm ashamed of your bosses."

Some opponents say Congress members in Virginia, pressured by well-heeled Tidewater residents weary of jet noise and pollution near Fentress, have outmaneuvered North Carolina politicians.

North Carolina state Sen. Fred Smith, a Republican military veteran running for governor, told the hearing that the Navy plan "would improve the lives of some Virginians, but would destroy the lives of many North Carolina families."

Al Klemm, a Beaufort County commissioner, added: "Virginia is doing an excellent job of exporting its noise and pollution to North Carolina."

The Navy's 2003 designation of Pocosin Lakes as its "preferred site" was challenged in federal court by three environmental groups in 2004. In 2005, the courts ordered the Navy to conduct a new environmental impact study. The recent hearings were held to present the new plan to residents.

In color-coded handouts and elaborate display charts, the Navy detailed "ambient soundscape measurements," "waterfowl noise response evaluations" and "BASH management" — for bird-aircraft strike hazard. It concluded that the runway's effect on airspace, pilot safety, farmland, birds, noise levels, wetlands, endangered species and the local economy would be manageable.

In addition to seizing farmland and homes, the plan would forbid farmers to grow soybeans, corn or wheat — staples that are choice waterfowl feed — on 25,000 acres surrounding the site. The plan also refers to using fireworks, dogs, traps, poison or guns to control waterfowl and other wildlife that might interfere with the Super Hornets.

Farmers complained bitterly about the crop restrictions, and references to gunfire and poisons enraged environmentalists, bird lovers and residents.

"The mere mention of toxins to manage wildlife is obscene," said Adam O'Neal, mayor of the tiny Pungo River town of Belhaven.

Brown, the Navy spokesman, said opponents had taken the poison references out of context. He said that the plan mentioned poison because it was used to control birds at other airports, but that its use at the Pocosin Lakes site was highly unlikely.

"Lethal controls would be used only as a last resort," Brown said.

In the farm-based communities around the site, the talk is of economic devastation if the plan is approved by Navy Secretary Donald C. Winter.

The Navy is offering to pay for farms and homes, but residents say no amount of money can compensate for their losses. "I built my house to die in, not to sell," said Richard Boyd, a farmworker whose brick rancher sits next to the site of the proposed runway.

Allen, 64, who farms 2,300 acres, served four years as an Air Force jet crew chief. "It's not about hating the military," he said. "It's about hating the politics — bringing noise and disruption down here because people in Virginia don't want it up there."

Dozens of farmers would go out of business under the plan, Allen said.

Ronnie Gibbs, who sells seed and fertilizer to farmers, said the economic effect of the runway would ripple through local communities that relied on farming.

"I'd pretty much be knocked out," Gibbs said. "So would the grocery stores, supply houses, all the people who work for farmers…. It would ruin us all."

[Vympel]

I'm surprised there's nowhere else they can put it that won't piss off so many people. America's big.

[White Haven]

May I recommend Bumfuck, Nowhere, Midwest United States. Go find a nice bit of flat-ass nothing in the back end of Beyond. I've been out there enough, there're stretches where you can drive for an hour in a straight line and see nothing on either side of the road.

[Bounty]

It's heartwarming to see left and right, liberal and conservative come together for a common cause

[Uraniun235]

There's a whole county in southeastern Oregon whose population density is less than one person per square mile. There are vast tracts of deserts in Nevada.

"No better place"? The hell?

[Wanderer]

If we reinstated the Grog Ration, would the Navy come to Michigan? You could take some of our Islands. Gull Island, South and North Fox Islands look good.

They are in Lake Michigan, far from land and sparsely populated. People wouldn't even know you are there.

[Tsyroc]

Actually I think the Michigan idea is a good one. Plenty of water so they can get out of visual sight of land while doing their flight training.

Really, the Navy shouldn't be forking out big bucks to buy people out. They should be looking for places nobody give a fuck about and going there.

Personally, I'd like to know why the Navy needs some place new in the first place. Are they getting booted out of some place they currently are?

[Lonestar]

The Field Has to be between Cherry Point MCAS and Oceana NAS, which means that it Has to be on the East Coast, probably in North Carolina.

IIRC, Virginia actually pushed for using a now de-commissioned Army Base(Fort Pickett...Hah) outside of Richmond. Navy vetoed that idea because it's too far inland.

[White Haven]

The Field Has to be between Cherry Point MCAS and Oceana NAS, which means that it Has to be on the East Coast, probably in North Carolina.

Maybe I'm missing something...why is this?

[Cosmic Average]

Maybe I'm missing something...why is this?

From the article:

The Pocosin Lakes site best meets the Navy's needs among the five it has considered in the region, the service says. "Why not go to a different site? Show us a better site that meets the Navy criteria," said Navy spokesman Ted Brown.

The proposed landing field is roughly halfway between Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia, where Super Hornets are now based, and Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, which would get 24 of the jets under the OLF plan. Pilots train now on an 8,000-foot runway at Fentress Naval Auxiliary Landing Field in Chesapeake, Va., near Oceana. Creeping suburbanization and "light pollution" made expanding that site unworkable, the Navy says.

I guess they need it between the bases because that's where the planes are going to be stationed. They'll use the Pocosin Lakes runway to train pilots in landing and taking-off, probably. Then they'll store the planes at the other bases when they're done with them, maybe.

[Lonestar]

Maybe I'm missing something...why is this?

It doesn't specify as such in the article, but I know from previous articles that they(the USN) want a practice field that can double as an emergancy field, with the Marine Aviation wings at Cherry Point and the Navy stuff at Oceana having a field in between would be optimal(also, neither the Marine Aviators or the Navy aviators would have to trek all the way up to Virginia or all the way down to Cherry Point)

[White Haven]

Okay. I'd seen that bit in the article, but it just said that the site was there, not why. Seems rather excessively convenience-based for something as mundane as a training field, but meh.

[Sea Skimmer]

I'm surprised there's nowhere else they can put it that won't piss off so many people. America's big.

You’d be surprised how built up the US east coast is getting, you really aren’t going to find blocks of land that big that wont require displacing at least a few people and aren’t already parks. Moving the training out west would create all sorts of additional problems and costs. Airspace restrictions also narrow down the pool of options considerably.

However I do find it very strange that the USN thinks it needs to build a new runway and base at all. A number of existing airbases are already being closed down, and fuck locals already complaining about noise. They shouldn’t have bought houses besides airbases that have existed for upwards of 75 years! It’s become fashionable in the US though, to build housing developments besides drag strips, firing ranges and airports and then campaign to have those preexisting facilities closed down. Usually the developers win too.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Why couldn't they buy a supertanker and put a flight deck on it? That would allow for much more realistic training without entailing many of the same risks as landing on a carrier because the flatform would be much, much larger. Then they could put the thing wherever they wanted to.

[Wanderer]

It doesn't specify as such in the article, but I know from previous articles that they(the USN) want a practice field that can double as an emergancy field, with the Marine Aviation wings at Cherry Point and the Navy stuff at Oceana having a field in between would be optimal(also, neither the Marine Aviators or the Navy aviators would have to trek all the way up to Virginia or all the way down to Cherry Point)

How then do we Michigandiers go about making our Gull Island, South and North Fox Islands attractive?

Would mentioning that we have several National Guard Air Bases a little light on Aircraft nearby and Factory and Mechanic workers more than willing to make all your needs, hookers needing work, and good fishing help?

[Sea Skimmer]

Why couldn't they buy a supertanker and put a flight deck on it? That would allow for much more realistic training without entailing many of the same risks as landing on a carrier because the flatform would be much, much larger. Then they could put the thing wherever they wanted to.

That really wouldn’t work. The land facility with a carrier deck marked out on it is for the earliest phases of training. Landing on a real ship not only requires well… landing on a real ship it would also then require a catapult launch to get back in the air. That’s a big problem when you want to make lots of practice passes. The conversion would not be very cheap since the whole superstructure would have to be cut off (which means you need new crew accommodations), a flight deck built and catapult + support equipment installed.

Just having a larger deck, and it wouldn’t be THAT much larger, isn’t enough for safety either. The deck of a ship, even a huge tanker, moves, and bouncing over the side or a landing gear collapse can mean death when a pilot could walk away from the same land accident.

The operating costs would also be far higher both because it’s a ship and because you’d need a helicopter or another ship on constant readiness in case someone goes over the side. You’d still need a land base to support the thing anyway. We used to keep a carrier around for nothing but training, but shrinking carrier air wings made it much less necessary and we no longer have one. However no one even did a touch and go on that deck before they’d practice dozens on times on the land mockup.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

That really wouldn’t work. The land facility with a carrier deck marked out on it is for the earliest phases of training. Landing on a real ship not only requires well… landing on a real ship it would also then require a catapult launch to get back in the air. That’s a big problem when you want to make lots of practice passes. The conversion would not be very cheap since the whole superstructure would have to be cut off (which means you need new crew accommodations), a flight deck built and catapult + support equipment installed.

Just having a larger deck, and it wouldn’t be THAT much larger, isn’t enough for safety either. The deck of a ship, even a huge tanker, moves, and bouncing over the side or a landing gear collapse can mean death when a pilot could walk away from the same land accident.

The operating costs would also be far higher both because it’s a ship and because you’d need a helicopter or another ship on constant readiness in case someone goes over the side. You’d still need a land base to support the thing anyway. We used to keep a carrier around for nothing but training, but shrinking carrier air wings made it much less necessary and we no longer have one. However no one even did a touch and go on that deck before they’d practice dozens on times on the land mockup.

Ah, sorry. I thought this was supposed to be some kind of half-assed simulated replacement for our training carrier, not another early stage practice facility.

[Lonestar]

How then do we Michigandiers go about making our Gull Island, South and North Fox Islands attractive?

I think it's a matter of practicality. As I've said, Virginia actually suggested using the land from the now decommissioned Ft. Pickett base near Richmond as a new airstrip, and even that the USN considered "too inland".

[Wanderer]

How then do we Michigandiers go about making our Gull Island, South and North Fox Islands attractive?

I think it's a matter of practicality. As I've said, Virginia actually suggested using the land from the now decommissioned Ft. Pickett base near Richmond as a new airstrip, and even that the USN considered "too inland".

But this area was were WW2 Carrier Pilots trained and their is no competing airlines there and you can simulate enemy held Islands, etc.

Thats practicality for trainees and sparsely populated for peace of mind.

[Lonestar]

But this area was were WW2 Carrier Pilots trained and their is no competing airlines there and you can simulate enemy held Islands, etc.

Thats practicality for trainees and sparsely populated for peace of mind.

But all the infastructure(i.e. "places we store bombs") are located in very specific areas(and "Bomb depot" is not very prestigious thing to have in your neighborhood). Hell, I bet the main reason why the USN settled on NC was ebcause they thought that since the state was so conservative they'd have no problem getting local approval. The idea that eco-tourism(hunting, fishing, hiking, etc.) has been a huge moneymaker for the tidewater region seems to have flown over the Navy's head.

Frankly, I think the whole idea of people griping about the noise when they buy houses next to an existing airstation is stupid.

'Sides, after the whole Vieques debacle the USN has decided that all East Coast "enemy held islands" are to be simulated....which I guess means they fly around and bomb the water or something.

[Tanasinn]

It strikes me as strange that the article mentions only that the Navy "offered payment." It'd be interesting to hear if they're lowballing the land owners or are simply offering market value and (understandably) getting the cold shoulder.

[Lonestar]

Apologies for the Minor-necromancy, but I didn't that this was worth, quite, a new thread. Someone bop me on the nose if I'm wrong.

USA Today
May 18, 2007
Pg. 3

Plan Has Jets, Birds Sharing Air

House vote is 1st strike against Navy landing strip near refuge

By Traci Watson, USA Today


What's the best place for a landing strip where Navy pilots can practice touching down their jets?

The Navy says it's next to North Carolina's Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, where 100,000 geese and swans pass the winter, filling the skies by the thousands.

Opponents worry the landing strip would threaten a vital sanctuary for waterfowl — as well as endanger pilots, who would use the site to learn how to land their Super Hornet jets on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

Howard Phillips, manager of the refuge, says the impact from the jets, the noise they make and changes to the landscape from the strip would be harmful. "We lose another extremely important area for these birds," he says.

The Navy reviewed four other possible sites, but this one offered "the best combination" for the military's operations and the environment, says Ted Brown, spokesman for the U.S. Fleet Forces Command.

The former chief of the Pentagon's Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard team says whatever the site's benefits, eventually a pilot will be killed in a collision with a bird.

"It's not 'if,' it's 'when,' " says Ronald Merritt, a retired Air Force major who's now a consultant on the issue. "There are not too many places in the U.S. that would be as bad as this to build a landing strip."

On Thursday, the House passed a defense bill that would block the Navy from spending any money to build the strip next to the refuge. The site is opposed by North Carolina's two Republican senators, Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr, and the state's House delegation. In February, Gov. Mike Easley, a Democrat, asked his congressional delegation to get their fellow lawmakers to freeze funds for the Navy proposal.

The Navy reiterated in February that the Pocosin Lakes site is its top choice for the landing strip. Since then, the growing political opposition and concerns about the welfare of both pilots and birds have forced Navy planners to consider other sites.

"The Navy is working closely with elected officials. …We're open to suggestions. We're open to new information," Brown says.

The landing strip site is about 150 miles east of Raleigh. It's flat, sparsely populated and mostly farmland, rather than environmentally sensitive wetlands. It's also halfway between Virginia Beach and Cherry Point, N.C., where Navy squads that would use the training site will be based.

Still, the air traffic from birds can't be ignored. Each winter, at least 20,000 tundra swans and 75,000 snow geese swarm to the refuge from the far north. There they feed and rest before returning northward in the spring to breed. The American Bird Conservancy, a leading bird conservation group, has declared the refuge a "globally important bird area."

A flock of snow geese alighting on a green field "makes it look like it's snow-covered," Phillips says. "Then an eagle will fly over and blow them off, and it's a deafening roar as they're all squawking."

The birds flocking to the refuge aren't dainty: Snow geese weigh roughly 7 pounds, and tundra swans can weigh more than 20 pounds and have wingspans of 5½ feet. Merritt describes the possible impact on a Navy jet as coming from a "feathered bomb."

The Navy contends the landing strip could be made safe by tearing out the fields of wheat and corn near the landing-strip site where the birds feed. The birds could also be kept away with noise and dogs or, as a last resort, shot.

Officials at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge, fear that eliminating the birds' winter buffet could drive them away from the refuge. In a formal comment to the Navy, Dale Hall, director of the Fish & Wildlife Service, says the Navy's conclusion that such measures would have a moderate impact is "more definitive than the data can support."

Jeffrey Short, a retired Air Force colonel and expert on bird impacts on aviation, says the Navy can partially reduce the risk that a bird will hit a jet but won't be able to eliminate it completely.

"If you've got hundreds of thousands of birds flying around … you're going to have aircraft flying into them," he says.

Brown says the Navy knew that no matter which of the five candidate sites in North Carolina it selected to build the landing strip, it was bound to attract opposition.

"One of the admirals said early on, 'It's in the middle of nowhere,' " says Michelle Nowlin of the Southern Environmental Law Center, an environmental group. "It might be nowhere for the Navy folks, but it's the center of the universe for a number of different species."