Easley: OLF help wanted in U.S. Senate

When Gov. Mike Easley helped open the Wildlife Resources Commission’s new headquarters building on N.C. State University’s Centennial Campus near downtown Raleigh Tuesday, he came primed to say a few serious words about the Navy’s ill-conceived plan to put an outlying landing field in Washington and Beaufort counties.
Easley chose this opportunity to sound off in a stronger way than he has before about his opposition to the Navy’s preference of a site near the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. That’s where many tens of thousands of large migratory waterfowl spend their winters, loafing in the refuge and flying out each day to forage for food in nearby fields. Those birds and those jets are going to collide, aircraft accident experts warn – or else the Navy is going to have to somehow get rid of the birds.
The governor noted in his formal remarks that the Wildlife Resources Commission works to conserve the state’s natural resources, but when it protects these migratory waterfowl, “We’re protecting not just some of the resources of North Carolina but of the world and indeed all of North America.”
He also noted that commission members had gone to hearings the Navy is holding on its revised environmental impact statement, and added, “I hope you don’t get drafted as a result of it but it is very important ... to let them know we're not just talking about some small group of environmentalists.” We’re talking, Easley went on, about 850,000 North Carolinians who hold fishing, hunting and boating licenses and who want the refuge and its birds left alone.
After Easley’s formal remarks I had to dash back to the office to participate in a WUNC radio interview on recent Supreme Court decisions, but both the Associated Press and Wade Rawlins of The News & Observer recorded Easley’s informal chat with reporters about the OLF.
Gary Robertson of the AP wrote that Easley had gotten in a dig at the state’s senators, Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr, for not speaking out more directly on the OLF. Easley said he was seeking help from U.S. senators in other states, the AP reported: “I’m not getting any help out of our senators yet, but I have been talking to other senators because their ducks come down here too,” Easley said. “Everybody has a stake in the outcome. I think now that we have some people up there in the Senate that I know from those states, we’ll be able to get a coalition that will make them sit down and be a little more reasonable.”
And The N&O reported that Easley said putting the OLF near the wildlife refuge would be one of the “worst environmental mistakes” in state history and would “ruin the refuge.” Here’s a link to Wade Rawlins' story on the N&O website.
It shows Mike Easley has moved well off the dime in standing up to the Navy.