Camden to weigh anti-OLF resolution

Gates board declared opposition Monday

Editor's note: This story originally ran in The Daily Advance, Sept. 26.

Camden commissioners will consider a resolution next week that formally declares the county’s opposition to being considered as a site for a proposed practice airfield for U.S. Navy jets.

The Gates County Board of Commissioners adopted a resolution announcing their county’s opposition to the Navy’s proposed outlying landing field, or OLF, during a meeting in Gatesville Monday night.

Camden commissioners will consider a similar move at their meeting next Monday, County Manager Randell Woodruff said.

Last week, Navy officials unveiled six alternative sites for the OLF that were recommended by a state task force. Two of the new sites are in Camden, two are in Gates and two are in southeastern North Carolina.

One of those who face making a decision on the resolution in Camden is also an affected property owner. According to officials, Camden Board of Commissioners Chairman Jeff Jennings’ family has land holdings in one of the areas being considered for the OLF.

Jennings could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

The site that affects Jennings’ family’s property is in the Hale’s Lake area, a farming community with tens of thousands of acres of open space and family farms. The other site the Navy is looking at is in the northeastern corner of Camden near the Currituck County border.

The Navy has said it needs the OLF because it wants someplace where Navy pilots can practice takeoffs and landings under conditions that simulate night carrier landings. It preferably would like the facility to be located between Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Va. and Marine Air Station Cherry Point in Havelock.

The Navy’s preferred site for the OLF is in Washington and Beaufort counties. However, fierce opposition, led by North Carolina’s congressional delegation, appears to have eliminated that site as an option.

The six additional sites were recommended by a state task force created by Gov. Mike Easley to help the Navy find alternatives to the Washington-Beaufort site.

Although Camden has taken no official stance on the OLF as yet, several county officials have said the airfield could bring unwanted jet noise, depress land values and hurt the county’s ability to recruit business and industry. It also would remove valuable land from the county’s limited tax base, officials said.

Navy officials are expected to make a decision by mid-November whether any of the six sites named last week are worthy of more study, according to Navy spokesman Ted Brown. That decision will be left up to B.J. Penn, assistant secretary of the Navy for Installations and Environment, Brown said.

If one of the new sites is chosen as a preferred site, the Navy will issue a notice of intent in the Federal Register to conduct a more in-depth analysis, Brown said. The Navy will be required to follow provisions in the National Environmental Policy Act before it settles on any site, he said.

“This analysis takes 18 months to two years before a final decision” is made, he said.