Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Los Angeles Times
May 7, 2007
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."
May 7, 2007
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."