Easley, Dole, Burr: New best friends

For the past five years, the best friend environmentalists had in the fight to stop a proposed Navy jet landing field near the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife refuge was not an elected official. He was a conservative federal judge, a Republican who once worked for Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C. When he was appointed to office it would have been hard to guess he’d be thought of as the one high-ranking official who would stop the Navy in its tracks.
But U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle did what residents of Washington and Beaufort counties, environmental advocates, hunters and conservationists wanted other leading public officials to do: He listened, he read the record and he questioned whether the Navy had done its required homework, as federal law demands, before concluding that it would cause no environmental hard to put a jet aircraft practice landing field next door to one of the most important migratory waterfowl refuges on the East Coast.
Judge Boyle challenged the Navy's proposal relatively early, as did a number of local officials such as Plymouth Mayor Brian Roth and Washington County Commissioner Hood Richardson, and state Sen. Marc Basnight, D-Dare. Judge Boyle’s ruling forced the Navy to take another look, and the Navy is considering other sites in North Carolina and Virginia now.
But it was not until the past year that the state’s ranking politicians came to oppose the outlying landing field outright. First Gov. Mike Easley, then U.S. Sens. Richard Burr and Elizabeth Dole, who had had reservations about the project for several years, expressed their opposition to putting it near the refuge. The governor and the senators bickered a time or two recently, but they also moved closer to the same position and evidently realized they ought to be standing together.
Now they're new best friends. This week produced something that residents of Washington and Beaufort counties have been dreaming of for years: a clear, concise statement of opposition against putting the landing field anywhere that residents don’t want it, plus a suggestion that if residents do agree to accept it, the Navy should offer additional economic incentives. And by the way, they asked, does the Navy really need that landing field?
These three assertions constituted the heart of a letter to the Navy signed by Dole, Burr and Easley, a prime example of bipartisan cooperation that will surely brighten the mood of many who have worked so long to persuade the Navy that its first choice for a site was not a good one. You can read a copy of the letter on Sen. Dole’s Web site by clicking here.