THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 21, 1995 TAG: 9501210190
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LONG BEACH PRESS-TELEGRAM
DATELINE: LONG BEACH, CALIF. LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
Efforts to save the Long Beach Naval Shipyard are intensifying after reports that the Navy will recommend closing it.
The Navy's Base Structure Analysis Team, charged with comparing bases and determining which should be closed, has included the shipyard on an initial list of recommendations, a congressional source in Washington close to the Navy deliberations said Wednesday.
The recommendations are forwarded to the Navy secretary, who makes his own recommendation to Secretary of Defense William Perry. Perry presents a list from all service branches to the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission by March 15.
The year 1995 marks the final round of base closings, part of the post-Cold War military downsizing. It is the first round in which the Navy has recommended closing the Long Beach yard, though the base closing commission brought the yard to a vote on its own in 1993 and narrowly spared it.
The Navy's analysis of which bases to close has been a tightly guarded process, though one scenario under consideration was keeping a single Navy shipyard on each coast, according to documents obtained by The Virginian-Pilot.
If that option is settled upon, Hampton Roads congressmen have said, the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth is likely to prevail among East Coast yards because of its wide range of services.
When the Navy base-analysis team rated its seven shipyards in 1993, Long Beach officials said, their yard ranked third in value. Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Northern California and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine were at the bottom of the list.
But Portsmouth supporters proved the Navy's data analysis was incorrect. They raised their shipyard's military value ranking above that of the Navy yard in Charleston, S.C.
Charleston and Mare Island were closed. Portsmouth was spared, and this year, may be going against the larger Hampton Roads yard.
California, with the biggest military presence of any state, has taken the biggest hit during the base closing process. President Clinton this month is expected to name three people with California connections to the eight-member base-closing commission. MEMO: This story was supplemented by staff reports.
KEYWORDS: BASE CLOSURE by CNB