North Carolina's work to squelch a Navy landing strip in the state's rural northeast has hit a snag on Capitol Hill, with the state's two senators unable to push through language to block the development.

U.S. Sens. Kay Hagan and Richard Burr say they will try again this week on the Senate floor after being rebuffed in an earlier Armed Services Committee vote.

The Navy has tried for years to build a landing strip, called an outlying landing field, or OLF, in an undeveloped area close to its Oceana Naval Air Station near Norfolk, Va., Barb Barrett reports.

After pursuing several sites that were rejected because of local opposition, the Navy is considering three locations in Virginia and two in North Carolina.

The sites would be used for nighttime touch-and-go landings of F/A-18 E/F aircraft, known as Super Hornets. Pilots need the practice before deploying aboard aircraft carriers.

Local communities have been overwhelmingly opposed to the two sites in North Carolina, in Gates and Camden counties. Critics say that taking local farmland would be unfair and that nighttime noise would disrupt the community, with almost no economic benefit.

"We're saying, 'Look, this would be very disruptive to these communities and totally change the quality of life and the culture in these communities'," Hagan said in an interview this week. 

Camden and Currituck counties are also fighting a landing field.

After a successful fight by residents of Washington and Beaufort counties against a proposed landing field, the Navy began considering sites there and in Gaston County, along with three sites in Virginia.

Now, leaders in Camden and Currituck are mounting their own opposition. 

Camden County Manager Randell Woodruff said that the landing field would not only disturb the land in question but lead to restrictions elsewhere in the county.

"It really has the potential to be devastating to our tax base and our property values," he told Dome. "It's preventing us from attracting business and industry to the county, with that kind of facility taking up and putting restrictions on 30,000 acres."

He said the economic benefit of the landing field would go to Virginia, home of the Oceana naval air station, but the downsides will only affect North Carolina.

"We're not going to get anything but the noise," he said.

Related: Camden and Currituck officials commision soil study that shows problem with site.

The U.S. Navy said today it will study two sites in northeastern North Carolina and three in Virginia for a landing field where aircraft carriers pilots can practice takeoffs and landings.

The Navy said it was abandoning further consideration of its preferred site, which straddles Washington and Beaufort counties near a national wildlife refuge, reports Wade Rawlins. That site drew vigorous opposition from many local residents, environmentalists and the state's top political leaders.

The sites in North Carolina to be considered are Hale's Lake in Camden and Currituck counties and Sandbanks in Gates County.

They are within about 50 miles of Naval Air Station Oceana, where the fighter jet squadrons would be based.

But local officials in both counties as well as state leaders have expressed opposition to locating the airfield in the counties.

State Senate leader Marc Basnight of Manteo issued an immediate statement vowing to continue to oppose the sites.

"For nearly a decade, Senator Basnight has opposed the Navy's efforts to build an OLF in northeastern North Carolina," said Schorr Johnson, a spokesman for Basnight. "He has said that locating an OLF in a rural, economically distressed is absolutely unacceptable. With today's disappointing news, Senator Basnight vows to continue to fight on behalf of families who have worked this land for generations."

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole said she was discouraged by the Navy's failure to consult with local leaders in Camden, Currituck and Gates counties. She said she would oppose the Navy's efforts to acquire any site that lacks broad local support.

The Navy plans to gather public comments in the spring on the sites.

The Navy has agreed to look at six alternative sites in North Carolina for a practice airfield it has been wanting to build near a wildlife refuge in the eastern part of the state.

The sites, which state officials asked the Navy to consider, include two in Gates County and two in Camden County in northeastern North Carolina. Those sites are near the Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Va., where most of the squadrons using the landing field would be based, reports Wade Rawlins.

Also on the list: a site at the Angola Bay gameland, on the border of Pender and Duplin counties, and a site at Hofmann Forest, on the border of Jones and Onslow counties. Those two sites are in southeastern North Carolina.

State environmental officials and Navy representatives made a joint presentation today regarding the sites to an advisory committee appointed by Gov. Mike Easley.

Navy officials plan to review the alternatives and decide within the next 60 days whether to do in- depth environmental studies of any of them.

Read more after the jump.

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