U.S. military fights urban sprawl
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Beset by enemies abroad, the U.S. military also faces an insidious threat to training and operations at home -- urban sprawl.
Military bases throughout the country, many of which were once located in isolated areas, now find themselves enveloped by the inexorable spread of suburbs whose residents then complain about noise from planes or artillery, dust and danger of accidents.
The Pentagon, the National Governors Association and many states are trying to address the issue with a mix of voluntary guidelines and laws designed to protect the ability of the military to carry out its missions.
"All services in the military are experiencing this problem and are trying to work with local communities. Some are more cooperative than others," said one Pentagon official who deals with the issue.
"Military installations are major economic engines and development has been crowding closer and closer and closer, sometimes to the point that either the mission has to cease or the base has to close. This is what uncontrolled urban sprawl is doing to us throughout the country," the official said.
For example, Los Alamitos Naval Air Station near Los Angeles is no longer an active air base. It now exists as an army reserve station and there is some doubt how much longer that will last.
Arizona's Tough Measure
Air bases in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Mesa, Arizona, have closed partly because of civilian encroachment. A fighter wing was moved from MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, to Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix, Arizona. Now, Luke also is threatened by urban sprawl.
"Luke was established in 1941 in the middle of nowhere but if you look at current development plans, the population in the valley where it is located will be 2.9 million by 2020 -- a 500 percent increase," said Debra Sydenham of the Arizona State Department of Commerce.
Arizona has adopted possibly the nation's toughest measure to address the problem. It calls for all communities where there are military installations to develop land use plans that will restrict development near the base.
Developers building a little farther out from the immediate base perimeter must notify prospective buyers that military training occurs nearby and disclose noise levels. If they fail to do so, they can face fines.
The military together with some states and local authorities have tried other solutions such as creating agricultural preservation areas around bases, allowing conservation trusts to purchase land and in rare cases having the military itself buy or lease tracts of land.
George Foresman, an assistant to Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, said the governor had a meeting with 25 base commanders last summer to discuss the problem.
"Encroachment was the number one issue everyone wanted to talk about," he said.
Virginia bases play an especially important part in the nation's defenses because of their proximity to the U.S. capital. There is now concern around operations at bases such as Quantico, headquarters of the U.S. Marine Corps since 1917, 35 miles south of Washington.
With another round of national base closings looming in 2005, urban sprawl will be one factor considered when deciding which installations to shutter.
Tara Butler of the National Governors Association said many communities and states are economically dependent on bases that generate thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity.
"Urban sprawl does not only affect flight operations. It can also affect communications and the ability to conduct night training in true darkness," she said.
When Griffiths Air Force Base in central New York state closed in the mid-1990s, 15,000 people moved away, driving down the population of the nearby city of Utica by 12 percent. The city has yet to recover.
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