Regarding your April 4 Under the Dome item "Senators take no position on Navy field":
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole's refusal to take a stand on the Navy's plans for an outlying landing field in northeastern North Carolina reveals her confusion of the facts. She is right to want to see an adequate environmental impact statement, but blindly overlooks that the Navy is fighting in the courts to avoid having to prepare just such a statement. By appealing U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle's ruling against its inadequate study of the environmental impacts to the site, the Navy is not "going through the EIS process," as the senator stated, but is spending a great deal of time and taxpayer dollars to avoid it.
This highlights a pattern of confusion Dole has displayed where the OLF is concerned. Most notably are her misguided fears that opposition to an OLF at the proposed site would make our state seem unfriendly to the military and result in loss of military bases in the upcoming Base Realignment and Closure process. Dole and the public should not fall prey to this BRAC-mail. The decision-makers have many positive factors to consider -- factors of much greater importance than opposition to an OLF. Dole is gambling valuable environmental and community resources and gaining no guarantee of saving our bases, even in the short term.
In the meantime, if the Navy wins its battle in the courts, Dole and U.S. Sen. Richard Burr will not have an environmental impact statement to review as they say they'd like, and their constituents in Washington and Beaufort counties will have lost their land, their homes and in many cases, their jobs. In addition, two of our poorest counties will have lost nearly $300,000 of annual property tax revenue -- a devastating blow. Furthermore, tundra swans and other waterfowl will be in danger of losing their winter homes, and the public will have lost yet another of the last remaining natural areas on the Eastern seaboard.
This disastrous conclusion can be avoided if Dole would use her powerful position as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to encourage the Navy to obey the judge's order and return to the drawing board. If the Navy should decide to continue to pursue the proposed site in northeastern North Carolina, it will have to assess and disclose the environmental impacts to this site, as well as alternative locations, as the law requires.
That may explain why a number of the state's leaders were not actively opposing the landing field in such an environmentally sensitive part of the state. They wanted the jobs that would come with the aircraft at Cherry Point, and were ignoring the Navy's lame reasoning in picking the site near the refuge. Gov. Mike Easley was tip-toeing, Sen. Dole was walking a tightrope, and Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., was off running for president.
Because we know those impacts would be great, an even smarter solution would be for Dole and Burr to turn their attention to ensuring that the Navy chooses an appropriate site for an OLF, one that both meets the needs of the military and North Carolina. In any case, it is time for the senators to get off the sidelines and find a workable solution that benefits citizens without gambling their futures.
