Anti-OLF group forms in Currituck

Group: Moyock affected if Camden picked

By JOHN HENDERSON
Staff Writer

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Editor's note: This story originally ran in The Daily Advance, March 20.

MOYOCK — A third citizens group has formed to oppose the U.S. Navy’s plans to study two sites in the area for a pilot training field.

Calling themselves Currituck Citizens Against the Proposed OLF, the group announced its formation during a town hall meeting on the Navy’s proposed outlying landing field at Moyock Middle School Tuesday night.

“This is really our first attempt to get this thing off the ground,” Currituck resident and group member William Baker said.

Two other citizens groups, one in Gates County and another in Camden County, have already formed to oppose the Navy’s proposal to study sites in those two counties for the OLF. The Navy hopes the 30-month study will determine whether the Hales Lake site in Camden, the Sand Banks site in Gates, or one of three proposed sites in Virginia are suitable for the practice airfield.

Currituck residents have joined the grass-roots fight against the Navy’s study because if the Camden site is chosen and the OLF built, Navy jets could one day be flying over Moyock neighborhoods.

To illustrate how loud the jets would be, Baker played a camcorder video recorded by a resident living near a Navy airfield in Chesapeake, Va.

As the standing-room-only crowd listened, the thunderous roar of jets taking off from Fentress Field echoed throughout the school multi-purpose room. The video, which was produced by an anti-OLF citizens group in Gates County, also included seemingly contradictory statements by a Navy admiral about the need for an additional outlying landing field.

Like residents in Camden and Gates, Currituck residents are worried about the OLF’s potential effects on property values and their rural way of life. A brochure distributed to attendees at Tuesday’s meeting in fact suggested that the announcement alone of the Navy’s study is already hurting property values.

“There are already reports of local Realtors in the Moyock area requiring homeowners who are trying to sell their homes to provide a disclosure to potential buyers about a future OLF,” the brochure states. “An already weak real estate market has become decidedly worse with a stroke of the Navy’s pen.”

Like the Camden-based group Concerned Citizens Against the OLF, the Currituck group plans to put up anti-OLF billboards. It also plans to lobby current office-holders and candidates to oppose the study. Names, addresses, and phone numbers of current elected officials, as well as those who have filed to run for office, were passed out at the meeting. Moyock resident Juanita Krause said the group would like the North Carolina Legislature to pass a resolution opposing the OLF coming to the state.

“We need to ask (state Rep.) Bill Owens and Sen. (Marc) Basnight to contact the General Assembly. We need a formal resolution passed by the General Assembly,” she said. “What it does is it puts us in the spotlight.”

Krause said an OLF could have negative effects on the entire region.

“It is not just Moyock, but all the way south. ... It will change us forever if it does come here. It will never be the same,” she said.

The fledgling group acknowledged that it’s not nearly as organized as the citizens groups in Camden and Gates counties.

“We are talking with Camden about teaming up with them, since it is the same site (for the proposed OLF),” Baker said.

The Currituck group plans to get a post office box and apply for non-profit status. It has put together its first newsletter, and is forming different committees, including a fundraising panel.

Currituck County Manager Dan Scanlon also attended Tuesday’s meeting. He said the Navy has scheduled a May 6 “scoping” meeting in which officials will update residents about the OLF proposal, but that could change because that’s the date of North Carolina’s primary elections.

Scanlon said that there is power in numbers in the OLF fight.

“One letter (of opposition to the OLF) from a (county) commissioner has some weight. Five hundred from the community of Moyock is overwhelming,” Scanlon said.

Scanlon also urged residents to remember that the OLF fight will be a long-term struggle.

“This is a two- to three-year process,” he said. “This is a marathon. This is not a sprint.”