ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 5, 1997 TAG: 9702050095
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
IF THE MILITARY TRAINING AREA is expanded, the number of flights each year will increase from 66 to 2,268, at lower altitudes and later into the evening.
Virginia's least-populated county is about to get some company: The U.S. Air Force has set its sights on Highland County.
The Air Force wants to expand its military training area along the Virginia-West Virginia border to bring in most of the sheep-raising county, which bills itself as "Virginia's Little Switzerland."
In the process, the Air Force wants to increase the number of training flights over the region each year from 66 to 2,268.
It also wants to drop the altitude of those flights from 1,000 feet to 500 feet - and sometimes as low as 300 feet during "wartime training conditions."
And, instead of quitting at sunset, the Air Force wants its jets - mostly F-15s out of Langley Air Force Base in Hampton practicing air-to-air combat - to keep buzzing over until 10 p.m.
When Highland County folk found out this week, they started buzzing right back. "We will have to make a lot of noise if we're opposed to this," said cattle farmer and County Supervisor Robin Sullenberger.
He took to the airwaves Monday morning on the local public radio station to invite residents to troop down to the courthouse to register their opinions and maybe even use the county's fax machine to fire off complaints to the military. By the end of the day Tuesday, 68 of the county's 2,600 residents had taken him up on the offer - and every one of them was opposed to the idea.
"I think everyone understands that this training has to take place," Sullenberger said. "But one reason quite a few people live in Highland is the peace and solitude."
And with 2,268 military training flights a year - about six a day - people are worried there won't be much peace and solitude.
They're also worried that the jets will spook their farm animals, no small concern in a county where agriculture is the staple industry.
Sullenberger remembered when he'd just finished putting up a new fence around his silo and feedlot a few years ago, and a military jet on maneuvers zipped by. "The cattle stampeded and completely destroyed a section of fence," he recalled. "It took a day to get the cattle back in. They were literally terrified."
And what about the county's poultry farmers? "When turkeys get panicked, they kill each other," said Monterey engineer Tom Atkeson. "What will turkeys do when a jet comes over at 500 feet at sub-sonic speeds? It could wipe out what you have very quickly."
The Air Force said not to worry. "Five hundred feet is still pretty high," said Lt. Patricia Lang, a spokeswoman at Langley. And, she cautioned, the estimate of 2,268 flights is "the worst-case scenario. We don't anticipate it ever being that high, but we leave that leeway in case there's a wartime situation."
She said the main reason for the change is that the sector of sky in question - officially, the Evers Military Operations Area - used to be a training area for smaller, slower A-10 bombers. Now it's been transferred to Langley, which flies faster F-15 fighters, which need more room in the sky to turn around.
Still, Highland's main gripe is that county officials didn't find out until last week that the Air Force had already conducted an environmental impact study - and that the official comment period was scheduled to expire Thursday. The next step: Approval by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Sullenberger conceded that Highland - a county so small it doesn't have a county administrator - may have let things "fall through the cracks." But County Attorney Melissa Dowd has been working the phones to round up support from other government officials, and she may have found some.
The Air Force, she said, has granted Highland a 30-day extension to register comments. And Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, whose office likewise was caught by surprise, has got involved. The 6th District congressman has set up a meeting with Air Force officials to find out what's going on.
Dowd said county officials aren't opposed to the training flights; they just don't want that many zooming around overhead. But some Highlanders may not be willing to go even that far.
"I used to laugh when people would say 'not in my back yard,''' Atkeson said. "My feeling is, I don't know where else they could get the training in the mountains - and I don't care."
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