Media General News Service November 17, 2008
Navy to Move Carrier from Virginia to Florida
By Billy House
WASHINGTON – The Navy said Monday that it wants to move one of four nuclear aircraft carriers stationed in Norfolk to Jacksonville, Fla., prompting protests from Virginia’s two U.S. senators and Gov. Tim Kaine.
The move could be completed within five years, and would involve the relocation of about 3,190 military personnel.
“Considering the impacts of the financial crisis on federal, state and local budgets, we question the wisdom, and timing of an option that will cost the Navy an incredible amount of money and not significantly improve the nation’s security,” said Kaine, D-Va.
“We and others will vigorously demonstrate that the Navy’s announcement is without solid foundation or justification in the days and weeks ahead,” added Sens. John Warner and Sen. Jim Webb in a joint statement.
Warner and Webb said the relocation would disrupt families and impose greater security demands on the U.S. fleet.
In addition, “it would be disrespectful not to give the next administration, after taking office in 2009, an opportunity to voice its views …” said Webb, a Democrat, and Warner, a Republican.
Both men sit on the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, which Warner used to chair.
Florida members of Congress, led by Sens. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, and Mel Martinez, a Republican, praised the plans to relocate a carrier to the Mayport Naval Station from Norfolk.
The Navy currently keeps all of its Atlantic carriers at Norfolk. The Floridians argued that at least one should be moved to another location for security reasons.
“Getting all of the nuclear carriers out of one port in Virginia is in our national security interest,” said Nelson, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Nelson said he received word of the Navy’s action in a noon telephone call Monday from Navy Secretary Donald Winter.
"It is vital that our nation maintain more than one substantial naval base on the East Coast,” said Martinez, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Seapower subcommittee.
“From the Navy’s viewpoint, it is imminently predictable and defensible, and I don’t think the Virginians will be able to do anything about it,” said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense policy think tank.
But Pike said he believes the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama will review the move before finalizing it. And he said Virginia’s members of Congress – including Webb, a former Navy Secretary – will have a chance to make their case.
Webb and Warner said the move announcement failed to address the environmental and economic concerns that Virginia raised with the Navy during the past year.
The Navy will release an environmental study Friday that found no significant barriers to relocating the carrier to Mayport.
The last Navy aircraft carrier based in Mayport was the USS John F. Kennedy, which was decommissioned in 2007.
© Copyright 2008, Media General News Service
