THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 15, 1995 TAG: 9503150622
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
It'll be a David-and-Goliath confrontation, one of the principals suggested Tuesday. But tiny, isolated Cherry Point, N.C., is preparing to take on Hampton Roads and the Navy in a fight over the basing of more than 150 Navy jets.
Officials said Tuesday that the state of North Carolina is hiring a team of consultants and that local business and civic leaders are marshaling evidence to support their claim that the F/A-18 Hornets should relocate from Cecil Field, Fla., to the Marine Corps Air Station in Cherry Point.
An independent base-closing commission ordered the move two years ago, accepting a Navy recommendation to close the Florida base and move the jets to Cherry Point.
But now the Navy says that was a mistake; it wants most of the Cecil Field Hornets sent to Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach. A new base-closing commission is to make a final decision by July 1.
``We're going to do whatever we possibly can to change the commission's mind,'' said Derryl Garner, the mayor of Newport, N.C. His community is located near the southern end of the Pamlico Sound, about six miles east of Cherry Point.
The Carolinians will get the firstchance to publicly state their case on April 4 in Birmingham, Ala. The Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission has scheduled a hearing there to hear their appeals. Communities in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and South Carolina that would be affected by proposed base closings also will be appealing decisions at the hearing.
Oceana boosters apparently will be heard at a May 4 commission hearing in Baltimore. U.S. Rep. Owen B. Pickett - who represents Virginia Beach and Norfolk and who has been the base's most prominent advocate - is expected to lead a delegation of Hampton Roads business and political leaders there.
Cost estimates developed recently by the Navy indicate that most of the equipment and facilities needed to accommodate the 11 F/A-18 squadrons already are in place at Oceana. Bringing them to Cherry Point, in contrast, would cost more than $400 million, the service says.
But Cherry Point partisans are skeptical of those figures, noting they come from the same Navy that in 1993 defended the Cherry Point move as economical.
The Navy says ``the math has changed since '93,'' said Glenn Downs, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr., R-N.C. ``But we've not had the opportunity to critique their analysis.''
Garner, the Newport mayor, said that in the aftermath of the 1993 commission decision, private developers have bought land and built about 150 new homes around Cherry Point in anticipation of growth in the area.
And voters in Carteret County, where many base workers would live, have approved a $29 million bond issue for school construction and remodeling, partly in anticipation of a development boom.
Though the business and political establishments around Cherry Point are united in support of the Hornets, some voters are less than enthralled.
A local newspaper's unscientific poll, done just after the new recommendations were announced, found a majority in favor of letting the planes go to Oceana, apparently in part because of concerns about the noise and pollution they would bring.
But Marion Smith, a military liaison for Gov. James B. Hunt Jr., noted that those factors will be a part of life around Cherry Point regardless of the fate of the F/A-18s. Even if they're based at Oceana, the planes will often train over nearby Pamlico Sound, as dozens of Oceana-based jets do now, she said.
``We have to fight. . . .'' Smith said. ``As we absorb the negative impact - the noise and the pollution - we also (should) get some of the economic impact'' that would come from having the planes based at Cherry Point. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
HEARINGS SET
Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission public hearings:
March 29: Guam
March 30: Grand Forks, N.D.
March 31: Great Falls, Mont.
April 4: Birmingham, Ala.
April 12: Chicago
April 19: Dallas
April 20: Albuquerque
April 24: Delta Junction, Alaska
April 28-29: San Francisco
May 4: Baltimore
May 5: New York
by CNB