Congress denies Navy’s plans for OLF

Chapel Hill – A bill signed today has taken away the U.S. Navy’s authorization to build an Outlying Landing Field (OLF) near Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, giving a victory to locals, environmental groups and North Carolina’s political leadership and ending a four-year battle against the Navy. The bill prohibits the Navy from building a landing field in Washington and Beaufort counties.

“Congress has given the farmers and families of Washington and Beaufort counties, as well as the hundreds of thousands of birds that winter there, a reason to celebrate this holiday season,” said Derb Carter, director of the Carolinas office of the Southern Environmental Law Center, which represented the environmental interests in the case against the Navy. “By passing the de-authorization bill, Congress recognized what citizens, civic leaders, environmentalists and experts have understood from the beginning: it’s utter folly to put a military jet landing field in the middle of the core habitat for thousands of large birds.”

The National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2008, passed by Congress December 14, prevents the Navy from constructing an OLF at its preferred site in Washington County. They Navy had been operating under old legislation that authorized the Navy construct its OLF at its preferred site.

In 2003, the Navy began plans for the OLF at this site, 3.5 miles from Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, winter home to more than 100,000 snow geese and tundra swans, in addition to other waterfowl. The birds and the nearby refuge would be harmed by the Navy jets that would use the OLF to practice take-offs and landings each day.

The Navy’s plan also would have prohibited local farmers from growing corn, wheat and soybeans – staples of the local farming economy – on 25,000 acres of farmland surrounding the proposed landing field as part of the Navy’s efforts to redistribute the waterfowl. Originally, the Navy proposed to restrict the use of only a very small area immediately surrounding the landing strip, but a more detailed property acquisition strategy developed later would have allowed some landowners to keep their homes, but disallow them from farming these crops.

“This legislation is a great holiday present; I can only hope it will be accompanied by a New Year’s Resolution by the Navy to take the site off their list for good,” said Chris Canfield, executive director of Audubon North Carolina. “I’m very aware that there are other communities still facing the uncertainties of a landing field near them. While the massive bird issues that were apparent near Pocosin Lakes aren’t likely to be the deciding factor at these other locations, I do hope the Navy and our political leaders will display the wisdom necessary to achieve community buy-in to any plan.”

Congressmen Price and Butterfield, Senators Dole and Burr, as well as Governor Easley, came out against the Navy’s plans to build the landing field at the Washington County location. Governor Easley also convened a study commission to assist the Navy’s efforts to identify alternative locations for the OLF.

“If not for the tenacity of North Carolina’s political leadership, as well as the efforts of local citizens and public interest groups, the OLF might very well be built by now,” said Carter. “The Navy now knows it can not attempt an end run around the people in proposing a facility that would harm families, economies, and wildlife.”

In September 2005, a panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the Navy failed to take a hard look at the environmental effects of a planned Outlying Landing Field to be constructed in northeastern North Carolina and required it to prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS). However, the SEIS, which was released in February, 2007, continued to identify the Washington-Beaufort county site as its preferred alternative.

Following the Court’s decision, the Navy has been working with North Carolina and Virginia officials to explore alternative site ideas for an OLF. However, the Navy never abandoned the Washington County site as its preferred alternative and continued to assert that it was the best option, despite growing opposition.

“You’d have to try pretty hard to come up with a worse place to put a landing field. Congress has made exactly the right decision in putting a halt to this damaging plan,” said Noah Matson, vice president for Land Conservation at Defenders of Wildlife. “Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge provides vital habitat for endangered red wolves as well as geese, ducks and other waterfowl throughout the winter, and it’s a lot easier to change a Pentagon plan than it is to change nature’s ancient migration patterns.”