N.C. Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight told the state’s congressional delegation today that North Carolina doesn’t need any more study about a Navy outlying landing field.

The Navy, he wrote, can save its money.

“I am pleased to inform you that these studies and their significant costs are not needed. The people of northeastern North Carolina DO NOT wish to have an outlying landing field constructed in their community,” Basnight wrote in a letter to the delegation, reports Barb Barrett.

The Navy is conducting an additional study of migratory bird flights this winter near Hale Lake in Camden County, one of five locations it wants to consider for an airstrip.
The landing field would serve a squadron of F/A-18 Super Hornet jets at a Navy base in Virginia.

Basnight, who represents Camden County, asked the delegation to stop the study.

Wetlands and rare mussels could be the best block to the Navy's plans to build a practice airfield in northeastern North Carolina.

The word from representatives of opponents to the Outlying Landing Field, or OLF, came a few days after the Navy said it would delay the release of an environmental impact study until spring, the Virginian Pilot reports.

The study was expected to name the Navy's preferred airfield site from among five - three in Virginia and two in North Carolina.

Wetlands at both North Carolina sites have been underestimated and the necessary permits could be denied, according to a July 21 letter from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the Navy. The letter was released by a firm hired by Camden and Currituck counties to oppose the field.

The Navy has been told "several times" about this deficiency in their environmental study so far, the letter said.

In Gates County, a study in the Chowan River found a mussel listed as endangered in North Carolina — the Lampsilis cariosa, or yellow lampmussel — and five others listed as threatened.

That study was done for Gates County residents who oppose the field.

U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican on the Committee on Armed Services, opposed Sen. Richard Burr's amendment, which would prevent the Navy from building an outlying landing field on two sites in Camden and Gates counties.

"I rise in reluctant opposition to the amendment by my friend from North Carolina," said McCain, referring to Burr, who campaigned for McCain during the presidential campaign last year. "He and the other senator form North Carolina spoke passionately and to some degree persuasively in the markup of this legislation."

McCain said it was appropriate for Burr and Sen. Kay Hagan to react to local concerns. And, he added that "perhaps the Department of the Navy does not approach some of these communities in a way that would gain cooperation....But the facts are the facts, and that is the Navy needs a field to train carrier pilots within range of both air stations, Oceana in Virginia and Cherry Point in North Carolina."

During his Senate floor speech this afternoon, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr submitted decisions from the legislature opposing the Gates and Camden sites into the official congressional record.

He also stressed that the Navy’s proposed outlying landing strip would bring just 52 jobs, reports Barb Barrett.

"We’ve got communities today that are being affected. They’re being affected by the fact that property can’t sell, that people don’t want to move there because they don’t know whether there’s going to be a Naval jet base," Burr said. "They don’t know whether there’s going to be a protected area of 30,000 acres where all night long, they have jets going in and only 52 jobs…."

Burr said he expected a negative outcome on the vote, but said he had to take a stand for the people of North Carolina.

"North Carolina’s an incredible state when it comes to the military. That doesn’t mean the military can just walk in, make a decision that’s inconsistent with our state and potentially forces an adverse relationship with our state…."

The Senate defeated Sen. Richard Burr’s amendment to prohibit the Navy from building its outlying landing field on two potential sites in Gates and Camden counties.

The amendment, co-sponsored by Sen. Kay Hagan, went down on a voice vote in a nearly empty chamber, reports Barb Barrett. It would have been attached to the defense authorization bill now being debated.

Because both the Senate Armed Services Committee’s ranking member, Sen. John McCain, and chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, opposed the amendment, it had little chance.

Still, Burr said in his remarks that he wanted to raise the issue of how important it is for the military to consider community concerns in locating training grounds.
Similar language survived the House of Representatives’ version of the bill earlier this summer.

And Burr said on the floor he hopes that the Gates and Camden counties’ sites will be protected when the House and Senate conference committee convenes to work out a final defense bill.

Coming up: excerpts from the remarks by Burr, McCain and Levin.

U.S. Sens. John McCain and Carl Levin just agreed on the Senate floor to bring up the Burr Amendment to the defense authorization bill this afternoon.

That would be the amendment to keep the Navy from building an outlying landing field at either of two sites in Gates and Camden counties. The two locations are among several the Navy is considering.

Sens. Richard Burr and Kay Hagan tried to get the amendment passed in the Senate Armed Services Committee but failed. Now, they’ll try again on the Senate floor, reports Barb Barrett. Expect Burr on the Senate floor this afternoon (C-SPAN 2 if you’re a junkie) to talk about his amendment. Hagan may speak as well.

A vote on the OLF amendment could come later today.

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. 

The Navy could be prohibited from building an isolated landing strip for its Oceana Naval Air Station fighter jets at the Hales Lake and Sandbanks sites that are now under consideration by the Navy.

U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, a Farmville Republican, included an amendment prohibiting that site for an outlying landing field in the 2010 Defense Authorization Act approved Wednesday by the House Armed Services Committee, Barb Barrett reports. U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield, a Wilson Democrat, also helped with the amendment.

"The people of eastern North Carolina have spoken loud and clear on this issue," Jones said in a statement. “If the OLF is needed to support F/A-18’s operating out of Oceana Naval Air Station, then Virginia should bear the burden."

The Navy has been trying several years to find a rural spot in eastern North Carolina to practice nighttime landings, but has been blocked by lawsuits and Tar Heel state politicians.

The Hales Lake site is in Camden County; the Sandbanks site is in Gates County.
The bill must still go to the full House, and then to the Senate for approval.

The most-read posts this week were bad news.

The state's not doing well. The governor got a kick on the way out the door and a woman may have lied to a newspaper reporter. The posts:

1. Not-So Great Expectations: State tax collections are down 6.1 percent from projections, or about $520 million below what economists expected. So it's their fault...

2. Questioning Sentences: Gov. Mike Easley blamed structured sentencing for the problems with parole, but Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand said it's not to blame. So who is, Senator Rand?

3. Fielding Questions: Washington and Beaufort counties won their fight against the U.S. Navy. Now it's time for Camden and Currituck counties to fight. Just 96 counties to go...

4. (S)Tar Heels: Another Tar Heel is working in the Obama administration as a spokesman. But somehow he hasn't found a job for a certain former senator...

5. Crying Uncle: The niece of a patronage boss Eddie Carroll Thomas told a reporter she saw the job online, but later admitted that may not have been true. Maybe she saw it on EddiesList?

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.