DEPARTMENTS – September/October 2008

Navy Versus Nature

The pros and cons of the search for a local outlying landing field.

By Ben Swenson

On a farm near Sebrell, a tiny hamlet on the fringes of Hampton Roads in Southampton County, Bruce Phillips steps onto the back porch of a tidy old farmhouse and gestures toward the tree line across a broad field of soybeans. "I saw 10 deer there yesterday," he says.

Phillips has been thinking about his farming operation and the wildlife a lot lately. His farm, which has been in his family for more than 100 years, lies just south of one of five sites—two in North Carolina and one in Virginia—the Navy is considering for what it deems a necessary project: a $100 million outlying landing field, or OLF, that would be used to support aviation operations at Naval Air Station Oceana.

The OLF, according to the Navy, would include roughly 1,000 acres for the facilities and, with restrictive easements around the landing strip, requires as much as 30,000 acres in land area. Phillips claims that his 300-acre farming operation, and all of his family's 1,800 acres, would be irreparably harmed by the construction of an OLF.

But Rear Admiral David O. Anderson, vice commander for the U.S. Fleet Forces Command, has a different take. He says that farming operations like Phillips', as well as a thriving wildlife population, are entirely compatible with an OLF nearby. Anderson understands residents' consternation but says that the Navy must construct an OLF and will take great strides to "create a win for the Navy, a win for the nation and a win for the community ultimately hosting this facility."

Offers by the Navy to relocate affected families like Phillips' have so far fallen on deaf ears. "What they don't understand is that you can't just pick up an operation like this and move it somewhere else," says Phillips. "The Navy doesn't appreciate the deep historical roots that families and communities like ours have."

Under the command of Anderson, who has been tasked with heading the Navy's search for a new OLF, the Navy will continue to work in coming months to demonstrate to residents at each of the five sites that an OLF could benefit, rather than blemish, their counties. But if progress so far is any indication, both the Navy and the communities it is courting face a tough road ahead. For the full version of this article, see the September issue of Hampton Roads Magazine—available wherever magazines are sold.

For the full version of this article, see the September issue of Hampton Roads Magazine—available wherever magazines are sold.

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