WHAT IS AN "OLF"?
Where Will the OLF Be Located?
There are five locations identified. Two locations are in northeastern North Carolina and three in Virginia. The North Carolina sites are the Hales Lake/Moyock site in Camden and Currituck Counties and the Sandbanks Site in Gates County. The Hales Lake Site is located on the Currituck/Camden County border approximately 5 miles from Moyock, 7 miles from the north end of Elizabeth City, 10 miles from the new Dismal Swamp State Park, and 12 miles from Mackay
Island National Wildlife Refuge.
Who Are We?
Currituck and Camden Citizens Against the OLF (Hales-No OLF) is a non-profit, grassroots organization dedicated to the preservation of our rural quality of life, historical heritage, and our environment. We believe that the establishment of an OLF in northeastern North Carolina would yield disastrous and irreversible social and environmental impacts on our area. We believe that the Navy has other more cost-effective options besides the construction of an OLF in North Carolina including the use of existing military facilities such as Fort Pickett in Virginia.
When Will the OLF Be Completed?
We are concerned that NEPA is almost 40 years old with no improvements for environmental issues leaving us powerless and unprotected. Under the NEPA process, if an environmental issue is discovered, nothing needs to be done. NEPA only requires the identification of impacts and proposed mitigation. It does not require abandonment of the project even if serious environmental issues are discovered. The NEPA process has been satisfied and the project may still move forward.
Why should I care?
The Navy has identified approximately 22 sites at various locations across northeastern North Carolina and Virginia. At almost all of those locations overwhelming opposition has existed. The tax payers at each of these locations have had to utilize funds that could have been used to build schools, playgrounds, and other facilities that may have improved the community.
Your tax dollars have been used to study each site (most studies have not been released for public record). Your money, our tax dollars,
could have been used to improve our military by upgrading pay, equipment or to just make life easier for our hardworking military families.
During a previous EIS process for a proposed OLF in Washington County, North Carolina, the Navy brass fought with the community for almost seven years before abandoning the project. Why should you care? This can happen to you.
Well, Does the Navy Really Need an OLF?
The Navy does not need an OLF in North Carolina. The Navy currently has plenty of training capacity at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach and at Naval Auxiliary Landing Field Fentress in Chesapeake, Virginia, as well as at multiple existing military facilities up and down the east coast. A new OLF nearby in North Carolina would be a convenience for the Navy and not a demonstrated need. As former Virginia Governor Mark Warner recently said, there are rarely more than two carrier groups in port at Norfolk at any given time. The air wings normally deploy with the carrier groups...when the carrier groups are not in port, neither are the air wings.
"In fact, there are seldom more than two of our nation's 11 carriers in Norfolk at any one time." -
Former Virginia Governor Mark Warner in a Virginian Pilot Editorial dated May 25, 2008
Are There Alternatives to an OLF or Are Existing Landing Fields Available?
Yes. Virginia senior Senator John Warner has suggested the use of an existing abandoned military landing field at Fort Pickett, Virginia. This site would be ideal in that it is already a Federal facility with an existing runway that is suitable for carrier landing practice. The Navy has refused to consider this site and has cited distance to Fort Pickett as a deterrent. However, Fort Pickett is roughly the same distance from Oceana as was the Navy’s previously preferred site in Washington County, North Carolina.
North Carolina Governor Mike Easley has proposed a site in Carteret County called the Open Grounds Farm Site. It consists of thousands of acres of undeveloped farmland and is owned primarily by one owner. The Navy has balked at this site as well again citing distance and airspace issues.
North Carolina State Senator Marc Basnight has questioned why the Navy hasn’t studied the development of an offshore landing platform for carrier landing training. The Navy has dismissed Senator Basnight's suggestion as infeasible but has yet to perform any studies to back up this assertion.
The Navy already has an OLF at Fentress which is consistently underutilized. The Navy has used "surge" calculations to improperly give the impression that Fentress is frequently over capacity. These calculations assume the use of the Fentress OLF by nearly every available aircraft at Norfolk Naval Station and Oceana at the same time on the shortest night of the year. This is not a realistic scenario! Under normal operating conditions, Fentress has more than enough capacity to handle F-18 carrier landing training operations. During the extremely rare cases when a "surge" situation might exist, the Navy has plenty of available landing field training capacity at other existing military facilities up and down the east coast. In addition, according to the Hampton Roads Joint Land Use Study (HRJLUS), Field Carrier Landing Practice (FCLP) operations are restricted at Oceana! If the Navy's operational projections do not even include available capacity at Oceana, how can Fentress truly be "over capacity"? Fentress is only "over capacity" when the Navy refuses to utilize the existing capacity available at Oceana.
Why Do We Oppose An OLF at Hales Lake/Moyock?
1. Currituck and Camden Counties are two of the fastest growing counties in the U.S. The Navy has said that they are looking for a sparsely populated, "remote" area to practice carrier landings. Sparsely populated and remote does not describe Currituck and Camden Counties. This is simply the wrong place for an OLF.
2. The Hales Lake/Moyock site is prone to dangerous peat fires...a hazard to both the pilots as well as the community.
3. The Hales Lake/Moyock site is prone to severe flooding.
4. The Hales Lake/Moyock site is home to thousands of migratory birds. An OLF here would be dangerous to both the pilots and the birds.
5. Virginia Beach and Chesapeake citizens have sued the Navy to the tune of $500 million dollars over the noise created by the Super Hornet jet aircraft. This is the same noise that the Navy is trying to export to North Carolina.
6. The Navy has other more cost-effective options including using the existing underutilized capacity at Oceana, exploring other Super Hornet siting options that would place the jets closer to existing government facilities, revisiting alternative sites such as the Open Grounds Farm site, and exploring the use of other government owned properties such as Fort Pickett in Virginia.
7. In 2005, the BRAC Commission emphatically stated that "Oceana is not the future of Naval aviation on the East Coast." If Oceana's future is in doubt, why is the Navy spending upwards of $300 million of our tax dollars and destroying a community for an OLF that may be obsolete in 5 or 10 years?
NEW! THE NAVY HAS BEEN BUZZING CAMDEN AND CURRITUCK COUNTY WITH THEIR JETS FOR THE LAST NINE MONTHS!
They will come back at the end of their Environmental Impact Study and say that no one has complained! The problem is that most NC residents haven't known to whom they can complain or where. Some have even called the Currituck County Sheriff's Department to complain to no avail.
Some of these jets have been flying very low over Moyock in particular.
IF YOU HEAR OR SEE NAVY JETS FLYING LOW OVER MOYOCK OR ELSEWHERE IN CURRITUCK OR CAMDEN, CONTACT OCEANA BASE OPERATIONS AND FILE A COMPLAINT AT THE FOLLOWING NUMBER:
757-433-2162
"NO OLF" YARD SIGNS ARE NOW AVAILABLE FOR $5.00 EACH!! CONTACT US AT HalesNoOLF@noolfcurrituck.org
Or At
P.O. Box 87
Moyock, NC 27958
TO PURCHASE YOUR SIGNS.
We must contact members of our North Carolina Congressional Delegation as well as Governor Easley's Office to determine the status of this request!
Has our Congressional Delegation as a group contacted the Navy? Has the Navy responded?
Donations are not tax deductible but appreciated nonetheless. The Navy has unlimited resources (our tax dollars). We are simply everyday citizens.
Will The OLF Bring Jobs?
Look at the big picture: 30,000 acres (an area roughly the size of the city of Norfolk) taken away from potential development, environmental destruction and loss of valuable cropland, and intense noise that will drive people away. THERE IS NO BENEFIT TO THE CITIZENS HOSTING AN OLF IN THEIR COMMUNITIES.
Meanwhile, Oceana will only be a home base for the Super Hornet aircraft. They will only use Oceana for 5 nighttime field carrier landing practice (FCLP) operations a year. In contrast, they are projecting 30,000+ nighttime FCLP operations to be conducted at Fentress per year. If a new OLF is constructed in North Carolina, Fentress’ 30,000+ nighttime FCLP operations will be shifted to North Carolina while Oceana remains underutilized and Fentress is likely to be closed.
On August 20, 2005, at the 2005 BRAC Commission Regional Hearings, then Virginia Governor Mark Warner testified, "a new OLF that the Navy has made the decision to build will improve the overall capability of Oceana by moving out of Fentress."
Oceana has four runways—three measuring 8,000 feet (2,400 m) in length and one measuring 12,000 feet—that are designed for high-performance aircraft.
Why is the Navy only projecting five nighttime FCLP operations to be conducted at Oceana per year?? Isn’t Oceana the East Coast Master Jet Base? Shouldn’t the available training capacity at the Master Jet Base be utilized first before even considering spending $300 million dollars of taxpayer money on a new OLF in North Carolina?
NAS Oceana's primary mission is to train and deploy the Navy's Atlantic Fleet strike fighter squadrons of F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets. The available training capacity at Oceana is what the Navy and Virginia relied upon in securing the eight Super Hornet squadrons in 2003. Now they are telling us that they cannot complete their mission of training Super Hornet pilots without a new OLF in North Carolina. It’s a misleading job interview…you claim to be able to do the job but when you get the job you can’t complete the task.