THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 2, 1995 TAG: 9505020259
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
State and local officials plan a low-key defense against a Tar Heel challenge of Oceana Naval Air Station as the military base-closing commission conducts a critical hearing in Baltimore on Thursday.
A delegation of North Carolinians, led by Gov. James B. Hunt Jr., is out to persuade the eight-member panel to reject a Navy plan to relocate 163 F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bomber jets to Oceana. The planes should go instead to the Marine Corps Air Station at Cherry Point, N.C., the Tar Heels contend.
At stake for both communities are about 5,000 jobs and a $150 million annual payroll.
Hampton Roads' case, spearheaded by U.S. Rep. Owen B. Pickett, is grounded in Navy cost estimates. The service says the planes can be shifted to Oceana from their base at Cecil Field, Fla., for about $67 million; moving them to Cherry Point would cost more than $400 million.
But officials from North Carolina say Virginia's congressional delegation has clouded the cost issue. The Navy would have to spend more than what is projected for the move to Oceana and less - only $250 million, at most - for a move to Cherry Point, they say.
The challengers also will note Oceana's location in densely populated Virginia Beach, saying it poses a safety hazard.
Additionally, they will raise the integrity of the Pentagon as an issue: The 1993 base-closing commission approved the move to Cherry Point; businesses and governments in counties around the Carolina base have invested in new schools, housing, sewage treatment facilities and other improvements to accommodate the change.
``We're trying . . . to get them to stand by their decision,'' Newport, N.C., Mayor Derryl Garner saidlast week. His town, near the southern end of Pamlico Sound, is just six miles east of Cherry Point.
Oceana's advocates will get 15 minutes to state their case before the eight-member Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission. The North Carolina contingent will have 20 minutes.
Time is limited because the commission also is hearing appeals from other Virginia communities with threatened bases and from officials in Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia concerning bases in their states.
For Hampton Roads, Oceana is the most critical facility on the schedule and has been the focus of lobbying by Pickett, a Democrat representing the 2nd District, which includes Virginia Beach and Norfolk.
But the biggest chunk of the 100 minutes allotted to Virginia will go for defense of Fort Pickett, an Army base near Blackstone.
The Army wants to transfer most of the 45,000-acre base to the Army National Guard.
That would take away most of the 300-plus military and civilian jobs at the base and send elsewhere up to 90,000 reservists a year, who pump money into the Southside Virginia economy when they come to Fort Pickett for training.
Bill Armbruster, a Blackstone town councilman who has led local efforts to save the base, said three buses and a caravan of private cars and vans will take about 200 Southside residents to Baltimore for the hearing.
``We feel like the Army has not done their homework on this,'' he said. Fort Pickett is heavily used in training for the kind of interservice operations the Pentagon is stressing, he said.
Navy SEALs and Marines stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C., are frequent visitors. The base also has some of the most extensive tank firing ranges on the East Coast and a 5,300-foot airstrip.
After the Army suggested the field was inadequate, U.S. Rep. Norman Sisisky, whose 4th District includes the fort, arranged this spring to have one of the Air Force's giant new C-17 transport planes flown in to demonstrate otherwise. The Air Force has been using the field for training missions ever since.
Though Thursday's hearing will focus on convincing the commission of the base's value, state congressmen and local officials are aggressively lobbying the Army behind the scenes.
They want service officials to reconsider the recommendation that the fort be closed, then go to the commission with a new plan before that panel makes its final base-closing decisions in late June. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
N.C. Gov. James B. Hunt Jr.
U.S. Rep. Owen B. Pickett
KEYWORDS: BASE CLOSINGS OCEANA NAVAL AIR STATION MILITARY BASES by CNB