Navy nixes several sites for future landing field
By: Meghan Cooke, Staff Writer
Issue date: 1/24/08 Section: State & National
Environmentalists and some N.C. residents breathed a sigh of relief Tuesday when the U.S. Navy announced a revised list of possible sites for a landing field.
The new plan kept a site in Camden and Currituck counties and another in Gates County as possibilities, while ruling out five North Carolina sites previously considered for an Outlying Landing Field.
The project, which has been in the works for six years, would provide practice landing space for Navy and Marine pilots stationed nearby.
Three Virginia locations in Surry, Sussex and Southampton counties are also still being considered.
A site straddling Washington and Beaufort counties was the preferred location until environmentalists and locals raised opposition to the project because of its potential damage to the area surrounding Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. Thousands of birds migrate there each year.
"There is a profound sense of relief for people in the Washington area," said Christa Wagner, a lobbyist for the N.C. Sierra Club.
"I don't know what we're going to do, except oppose it," said Gates County Commissioner Kenneth Jernigan, who might be forced to move off his family farm, located across from the proposed site.
He said he thinks an OLF would block any further development in an already struggling economy and decrease the county's tax revenue.
Camden County Manager Randell Woodruff said the OLF would destroy the culture of the surrounding rural farming area: "This isn't the kind of list you want to make."
Wagner said that environmental problems are a possibility, but that the Sierra Club will not pass judgement on the impact of the OLF until the Navy releases results of its environmental analysis.
In addition to that analysis, the Navy will host public hearings. Altogether, the process could take up to 30 months.
"It's going to be a long process," Woodruff said. "Two and a half years of this cloud hanging over the county."
The new plan kept a site in Camden and Currituck counties and another in Gates County as possibilities, while ruling out five North Carolina sites previously considered for an Outlying Landing Field.
The project, which has been in the works for six years, would provide practice landing space for Navy and Marine pilots stationed nearby.
Three Virginia locations in Surry, Sussex and Southampton counties are also still being considered.
A site straddling Washington and Beaufort counties was the preferred location until environmentalists and locals raised opposition to the project because of its potential damage to the area surrounding Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. Thousands of birds migrate there each year.
"There is a profound sense of relief for people in the Washington area," said Christa Wagner, a lobbyist for the N.C. Sierra Club.
"I don't know what we're going to do, except oppose it," said Gates County Commissioner Kenneth Jernigan, who might be forced to move off his family farm, located across from the proposed site.
He said he thinks an OLF would block any further development in an already struggling economy and decrease the county's tax revenue.
Camden County Manager Randell Woodruff said the OLF would destroy the culture of the surrounding rural farming area: "This isn't the kind of list you want to make."
Wagner said that environmental problems are a possibility, but that the Sierra Club will not pass judgement on the impact of the OLF until the Navy releases results of its environmental analysis.
In addition to that analysis, the Navy will host public hearings. Altogether, the process could take up to 30 months.
"It's going to be a long process," Woodruff said. "Two and a half years of this cloud hanging over the county."
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