Camden makes Navy’s shortlist for OLF

Hales Lake now one of 5 sites being studied

Editor's note: This story originally ran in The Daily Advance, Jan. 23.

Much to the dismay of local officials, the Hales Lake area in Camden County has made a shortlist of sites that will be further evaluated for a new Navy landing field.

The U.S. Navy has narrowed its choices for the practice airfield, also known as an outlying landing field, to three sites in Virginia and two in North Carolina, Navy officials announced today. The two sites in North Carolina are the Hales Lake area in central Camden and the Sandbanks area in Gates County.

Camden officials, who oppose an OLF in the county, reacted with dismay.

“I’m disappointed, of course,” County Manager Randell Woodruff said. “It could cause businesses or even people considering moving to this county to think twice about investing here or purchasing a new home.”

Gates officials couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Mark Anthony, a Navy officials with U.S. Fleet Forces N44, told Woodruff by letter that the Navy is still committed to the OLF project.

“We still need this OLF,” Anthony wrote. “The requirement remains a critical Department of Defense and Navy priority. It is necessary for training capacity and operational flexibility, improved training fidelity, safety issues, and encroachment mitigation.”

Anthony’s letter indicates that five North Carolina sites analyzed in a previous Navy study — Bertie, Craven, Hyde, Perquimans and Washington-Beaufort counties — are no longer under consideration for an OLF. The decision to remove Washington-Beaufort from consideration wasn’t a complete surprise. The site has been roundly criticized by political and environmental officials, was the subject of a federal lawsuit, and spurred Congressional leaders to pass legislation effectively blocking the Navy from using it for an OLF.

Anthony writes that the Virginia sites that will be part of a two-year study are: Cabin Point, Dory, and Mason. A Navy official today declined to comment on the exact location of those sites, saying a map would be released later in the day showing where they are.

Camden officials first learned that the county was under consideration for the OLF in September. That’s when Navy officials announced during a Sept. 18 meeting of a state task force on the OLF project that six new sites in northeastern and southeastern North Carolina were being studied for the proposed airfield. Two of the sites were in Camden and two others in Gates.

The announcement caught Camden officials off guard, all of whom said they were hearing about the Navy’s interest in the county for the first time.

Besides Hales Lake, the other site selected for initial study was in the northeastern corner of the county near where the Black Bear Landfill was to be built. The landfill project was effectively killed by state legislation in August that placed new restrictions on where landfills can be built.

County officials immediately moved to block the Navy’s study of the two sites, passing a resolution opposing an OLF in Camden. Officials said the airfield would ruin the county’s economy because it would remove thousands of acres from tax rolls while creating only about 30 jobs, many of them unskilled and low-paying. They also said the airfield would quash hopes of luring sorely needed industrial or commercial growth to Camden.