ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, February 28, 1997 TAG: 9702280054
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
The U.S. Air Force has run up the white flag.
Bowing to high-decibel opposition to its low-altitude flights, the Air Force on Thursday withdrew its proposal to increase the number of training flights along the Virginia-West Virginia border from 66 per year to 2,268.
But the proposal could come back as early as this fall, after the Air Force completes a review of its training needs, said Capt. Gary Carruthers, a spokesman for Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, where most of the F-15 flights would have originated.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, said after meeting with Langley's commanding officer that he was under the impression the proposal wouldn't come back "any time this year."
Regardless, officials in Highland County - which lies under most of the training zone and where most of the opposition arose - were hesitant to claim total victory. "My hunch is they're going to come back and need some of my air space anyway," said Melissa Dowd, the county attorney who spearheaded the effort.
Until then, though, she said Highland County, population 2,300, has proven the power of grass-roots lobbying. "People think we're the most rural area in the state and isn't that quaint, but folks out here have no problem exerting their rights."
And exert them they did, flooding federal officials with phone calls, letters and faxes. "We may have few people, but it seemed most of them wrote a letter to their congressman or the Air Force," Dowd said. At one point, the County Courthouse opened its fax machine to anyone who wanted to send a message to the military, and some 90 people took advantage of the offer.
Thursday's announcement came after Langley's commanding officer, Gen. Richard Hawley, met in Washington with Goodlatte and two congressmen from West Virginia. "He came into the meeting fully aware of our concerns, and he said we're going to look at it carefully and we're going to withdraw the proposal," Goodlatte said.
Later in the day, Hawley held previously scheduled meetings with Virginia's two senators, John Warner and Charles Robb, and Highland County officials suspect their positions on the Senate Armed Services Committee helped blast the Air Force plan out of the sky.
"I think the Air Force was totally caught unaware at the level of interest that Senator Warner and Senator Robb had in this," Dowd said. "If [Hawley] wants some big fancy new plane, it'll be hard to step on their toes."
The Air Force plan had quietly moved through the military bureaucracy since 1993, but didn't receive public attention until three weeks ago - just days before the public comment period was scheduled to end.
Under the proposal, the Air Force wanted to expand the size of the Evers Military Operations Area, increase the number of flights, extend the flying times until 10 p.m. and drop the altitude from 1,000 feet to as low as 300 feet. Military leaders said the changes were necessary for pilots to gain experience in evading radar in mountainous terrain.
The outcry in Highland County was immediate, as county officials warned the flights would ruin the quality of life and farmers feared the low-flying jets would spook their cattle into stampedes and frighten flocks of turkeys to death.
On Thursday, the Air Force admitted it hadn't done a good job of informing residents or local governments of the proposed changes. "We acknowledge the public input was inadequate," Carruthers said. He also said the military needed to re-evaluate its proposal in light of its current training needs, which may have changed since the proposal first took shape four years ago.
He said that review could take through the summer, which would mean the earliest the plan could come back would be the fall, although "we're hesitant to put a time line on it."
Goodlatte said the general told him, "We're back to square one."
LENGTH: Medium: 71 linesby CNB