Camden residents worry
about noise, land values

Navy officials to meet with Camden board Monday

By John Henderson
Staff Writer

Friday, February 20, 2009

Editor's note: This entry originally ran in The Daily Advance on Sept. 29.

CAMDEN — In March, Octavio Martinez bought one of the first homes in Camden Plantation, a subdivision of Colonial-style houses starting in the $300,000s on McPherson Road.

Moving from congested San Antonio, Texas, Martinez was looking forward to the country living that northern Camden County offers.

From his porch, Martinez can see miles of sun-baked soybean crops across the road, the greenish plants set out against the baby blue sky.

But over the past couple of weeks, Martinez has been wondering if he made the right choice. Especially now that he’s learned that the U.S. Navy has identified the area near his home as a potential training site for fighter jets.

“That’s one of the reasons we came here, because it’s the country, and nice and quiet,” Martinez said. “I think it would really change things if we were in a flight pattern.”

Navy officials said several weeks ago that they are now considering six additional sites, two of them in Camden, for a proposed outlying landing field. The airfield, or OLF, would be used by military pilots stationed at two bases — one at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Va., the other at Marine Air Station Cherry Point in Havelock — to practice takeoffs and landings.

One of the proposed sites in Camden is near where Martinez lives, in the northeast corner of the county near the border with Currituck County. The other is farther south, near the Hale’s Lake area of Camden.

Having grown up around military bases, Martinezdescribes himself as an “Air Force brat” and says he’s accustomed to aircraft noise.

“I’m not completely opposed to it (the OLF) if they take into consideration where the homes are,” Martinez said.

But if the jets fly close enough to his neighborhood so it sounds like a military base, he would be very concerned.

“It could affect property values,” he said.

Martinez does find it odd that he moved out to the country to get away from noise and congestion — and both now seem to be following him.

“I heard everything from the landfill to a biodiesel plant could be going in here. It’s like, ‘OK, I don’t know what is happening,’” he said.

OLF worse than landfill

For the past five years, a privately owned landfill was proposed for northern Camden. The county was participating in the project because it was supposed to pay Camden up to $3 million a year in landfill host fees. Plans for the landfill have been stalled, however, by state legislation passed this summer requiring specific buffers between new waste dumps and national wildlife refuges.

Martinez’s neighbors say as much as they opposed the county’s plans to develop a landfill in their part of Camden, they think a Navy landing field would be even worse.

“I hope they don’t (move it to Camden),” says Phyllis Knowles. “We’d probably wish we had the trash dump, even though it stinks. But I don’t want that either.”

Knowles, who has lived on Ponderosa Drive for more than 15 years, said she knows firsthand what it’s like to live near an OLF. She lived near the Navy’s Fentress site, where pilots based at Oceana now practice landings and takeoffs.She recalled how the jet noise used to keep her up at night.

“You can’t sleep because of all that racket,” she said. “I had one young’un, (and) she’d scream because of the racket. You couldn’t hear.”

Annette White, who lives on nearby Heritage Drive, said she’s not thrilled about the prospect of a Navy OLF being built nearby.

“I would think those planes fly at night too, don’t they?” she asked.

Indeed, they do. A Navy commander in fact told Currituck County officials on Thursday that 70 percent of the 31,000 annual takeoffs and landings would be at night.

“It’s a bad idea. This is not a good place (for the landing field),” White said. “I’d like to see something nice out here, not landfills or planes flying in and out.”