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.

U.S. Sens. Kay Hagan and Richard Burr are pushing a measure that would force the Navy to hold off on disposing of claims about water contamination at Camp Lejeune.

The amendment to a defense appropriations bill must still survive a conference with the House.

From 1957 to 1987, the water at Lejeune was contaminated with toxins at concentrations up to 280 times what is currently considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency and may have contributed to health problems faced by Marines and their families, according to Hagan's office. As many as 1 million people may have been exposed to tainted water.

The bill would halt efforts to dispose of claims filed by those families until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention completes studies of the health effects of the water contamination.

"Our amendment makes the desire of the Senate perfectly clear: the Navy should not dispose of claims until the scientific studies are complete,” said Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Marines and their families, who were exposed to dangerous chemicals in the Camp Lejeune drinking water over several decades, deserve to know how that exposure impacted their health.”

In July, Burr and Hagan introduced a bill that would open access to Department of Veterans' Affairs health care for veterans and their family members that lived on the base during the years of water contamination.

The N.C. Department of Justice says it will be an ally to northeastern North Carolina in its fight against the U.S. Navy's proposed Outlying Landing Field.

A letter from the Attorney General's office to U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, a Farmville Republican, indicates the department would enforce laws by which the state would retain some jurisdiction over lands seized for an OLF in counties that do not already have military bases. That would allow the counties to enforce noise ordinances, for example, on the Navy.

"Without full jurisdiction over property acquired for an OLF, it appears that the Navy would have difficulty in operating a military base," wrote Chief Deputy Attorney General Grayson Kelley. "The Attorney General's office will therefore continue to carefully monitor all legal issues related to the OLF siting process and be prepared to act as necessary to protect the economy and environment of eastern North Carolina."

The Navy is considering sites in Camden and Gates counties for a nighttime practice landing field for its pilots from Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach. Camden and Gates residents have opposed the Navy's proposals.

U.S. Sens. Richard Burr and Kay Hagan plan to meet Wednesday with top Navy and Marine Corps officials to talk about the decades-old controversy surrounding contaminated water from Camp Lejeune.

Thousands of Marines and their families stationed at Camp Lejeune in the 1970s are thought to have been exposed to well water that contained chemicals called trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene. Many of those exposed – some of the children at the time – have been diagnosed with a variety of ailments, including cancer.

Burr, a Republican, and Hagan, a Democrat, were disappointed at a National Academy of Sciences report released in June that gave inconclusive information about the impacts of the tainted water on families, reports Barb Barrett.

The study listed 14 health conditions and diseases that could potentially be linked to exposure from harmful chemicals at Camp Lejeune. At the time of its release in June, Burr argued that more investigation was needed.

Read more after the jump.

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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.

U.S. Rep. Walter Jones is seeking $43.8 million in earmarks.

The Farmville Republican released his list of 11 requested appropriations for the federal budget on his Web site.

The largest request is for $14.6 million for a new control tower at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. The smallest is for $250,000 to dredge a channel at Beaufort Harbor.

Other notable earmarks:

* Perform maintenance dredging of Morehead City Harbor, $9.5 million.

* Fund cancer vaccine research by the U.S. Navy, $4 million.

* Replace aging timber breakwater at Belhaven, $3.13 million.

* Run a N.C. National Guard anti-drug task force, $1.2 million.

In January, Jones renewed a "No New Earmarks" pledge, so all of his requests are for appropriations that have been funded before, a spokeswoman explained.

U.S. Rep. Walter Jones wants to rename the Navy.

The Farmville Republican is once again pushing to rename the Department of the Navy the Department of the Navy and Marine Corps, the Washington Post reports.

With a district that includes Camp Lejeune, Jones often writes condolence letters to the families of Marines killed in action. He told the Post that he feels it slights their contributions when the letter comes only from the Navy.

"The Navy and Marine Corps always sell themselves before Congress as 'one fighting team,'" he said. “If you're one team, then why isn’t the teams name Navy and Marine Corps?"

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.

Beverly Perdue's new chief of staff is a bit of a feminist.

Long before he managed the campaign of North Carolina's first female governor, Zach Ambrose was defending women in the pages of the News & Observer.

In an Aug. 24, 1996, letter to the editor, Ambrose took issue with a column by R. Whitney Christian, a business department employee who was subbing for regular columnist Barry Saunders.

In the column, Christian complained of "political correctness" on his grandson's T-ball team, which was required to have at least two girls on it. In response, Ambrose said Christian should stick to his day job, arguing that an all-boy team would not necessarily be better.

"I try to instill in my young daughter that she is a talented and capable person, not a talented and capable girl," he wrote.

At the time, Ambrose was not yet involved in politics. After serving in the U.S. Navy, he was an at-home father while his wife finished a graduate degree.

The full letter after the jump.

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