Sen. Warner offers alternative location for Navy landing field

Richmond, Va. — Sen. John Warner has suggested the Navy build a practice jet landing field in Virginia as opposition mounts over the proposed site in eastern North Carolina.

Warner, R-Va., recommended that Navy Secretary Donald Winter look at sites in Virginia, including Fort Pickett, after Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., said she would oppose funding for the site in Washington and Beaufort counties.

Dole sent a letter to Winter last week that said the Navy’s proposal fails to adequately address environmental and safety concerns about allowing fighter jets to land near a wildlife refuge.

The Navy’s preferred site is midway between the Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point at Havelock, and the Navy’s Oceana Air Station at Virginia Beach.

The Navy will base F/A-18 Super Hornet jet fighters at the air stations. Building the remote landing field would allow the jets to simulate night landings on aircraft carriers.

In a letter Thursday to Winter, Warner suggested the department look at Fort Pickett, about 100 miles west of Oceana Air Station, for the landing field. The base has “20,000 acres of controlled access land, restricted airspace up to 18,000 feet, and two runways each in excess of 4,000 feet in length,” wrote Warner, a former secretary of the Navy.

The Navy’s proposed North Carolina location calls for an 8,000-foot runway in the core 2,000 acres of the field, surrounded by a 28,000-acre buffer area.

The 42,000-acre Fort Pickett is operated by the Virginia National Guard and serves as a training facility for military and law enforcement. It had been closed by the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission in 1995.

William D. Coleburn, mayor of the 3,600-person Blackstone, where Fort Pickett is located, said as a native of southside Virginia, he has serious concerns about the “potential disruption of our greatest asset and that is peace and quiet.” But as an elected official, Coleburn said he is very open to the idea.

“We’re used to the artillery sounds, the booms at night at Fort Pickett, it’s the sound of freedom,” Coleburn said. “This is a different sound, but if it’s a different sound that also makes the cash registers ring and employs people, I would be interested in listening.”

Col. Robert Sparks, the base’s garrison commander, was unavailable for comment on Tuesday.

Warner confirmed in a follow-up letter provided to The Associated Press that the Navy would study the site. Navy officials have said a final decision won’t be made until this fall. Four other potential sites in North Carolina are being evaluated.

National sporting and conservation groups, along with local leaders, also have fought against the North Carolina site, saying the landing field would hurt thousands of migratory birds that flock to the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge each year.

Dole met Tuesday with Winter, according to Dole spokeswoman Katie Norman, who called the meeting “constructive.”

“She’s committed to working with the Navy, her delegation colleagues, and state and local leaders to facilitate a dialogue to help identify acceptable” sites in North Carolina, Norman said.

North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley, meeting with reporters in Washington Tuesday after testifying before a U.S. Senate committee on National Guard issues, said the state will choose to lose the landing field if it comes down to the Navy’s insistence that it be built at the site near the wildlife refuge.

There are other site options in North Carolina that make more sense, Easley said.

“There are a lot of places already used to this type of activity and a lot of them are in rural areas,” Easley said in a statement released through his press office. “If the Navy gets serious about one of the recommended sites, we’ll make it public so people can comment on it.”

Easley said he has been in ongoing talks with the Navy and the Pentagon on the landing field for four years.

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