Bill could kill Navy's airfield plan

Language added to a defense measure might stop the airstrip in Eastern North Carolina

WASHINGTON - A few sentences tucked inside a massive military bill on Wednesday could prove fatal for the Navy's proposed airstrip in Eastern North Carolina.

Reps. G.K. Butterfield and David Price, both Democrats, negotiated with other members of Congress behind closed doors to insert language that would prevent the Navy from building the training strip at its preferred site in Washington and Beaufort counties.

Meanwhile, a top Democratic House member from Texas wants the secretary of the Navy to consider closing the master jet base at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia altogether and sending its fleet of F/A-18 Super Hornets elsewhere. Among the half-dozen sites that Rep. Solomon Ortiz wants studied: Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point.

"It is a realistic possibility," said Rep. Mike McIntyre, a Lumberton Democrat, of the possible closure and shift of the jet base. "I think it's a real opportunity for North Carolina to consider."

The House Armed Services Committee, of which McIntyre is a member, hadn't approved the massive 2008 Defense Authorization Bill by Wednesday evening. Members may continue today debating the final wording on a bill that authorizes military programs.

It would go next to the full House, and then must be combined with an authorization bill in the Senate, where both North Carolina senators oppose the Washington County site.

The language related to the Navy's proposed landing field probably won't amount to more than a few hundred words in a bill that runs more than 700 pages. Depending on the outcome, the handful of sentences could shape the placement and timing of the landing field's construction.

A new search

If the language inserted by Price and Butterfield becomes law, the Navy would have to look elsewhere for a landing field.

"This simply is not an authorized project," Price said in an interview. "Certainly if something is forbidden by law, that's something they have to follow."

Ortiz's push drew opposition from Virginia lawmakers. After some debate, the committee agreed to "encourage" the Navy to study whether it should consider new locations for its Super Hornet squadrons.

"If the fate of Oceana is in question, it does not seem to be in the national interest to construct a landing field that may not be used," said Brian Roth, the mayor of Plymouth, the largest town in Washington County.

The Navy has been trying for years to build an outlying landing field for F/A-18 Super Hornets at Oceana. The fighter jets need space to practice nighttime carrier landings, the Navy says, because the base's airfield is being encroached upon by urban development.

Its preferred site is in Washington and Beaufort counties, but that land sits a few miles from the Pocosin National Wildlife Refuge, the wintering home of tens of thousands of migratory waterfowl.

After a vociferous outcry from residents, state officials and members of North Carolina's congressional delegation, Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter has told officials he will consider alternative locations. The Navy already has other sites it deems acceptable in the state.

Ortiz, chairman of the Armed Services readiness subcommittee, wants the Navy to report by February 2008 on a handful of locations for the master jet base.

They include the Naval Air Station in Kingsville, Texas, in Ortiz' district, along with possible sites in South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi and Marine Corps Air Station in Cherry Point.

Ortiz said pilots aren't getting the training they need now. Two years ago, the Base Realignment Commission issued a warning that sprawl from Virginia Beach was affecting the base.