“Team effort” is a cliche’ that football and basketball coaches often use to describe victory.
They might be overused words, but they fit perfectly the end of a seven-year battle with 30,000 acres of eastern N.C. farm land and the future of a treasured wildlife refuge at stake.
The U.S. Navy finally decided Jan. 22, 2008, that more attempts to take land from residents and endanger wildlife (and its own pilots) in Beaufort and Washington counties for a practice landing strip for jets wasn’t worth more effort.
The Greeks had more luck with the siege of Troy, although this time the Navy’s Trojan horse (trying to buy land from citizens before getting permission to build its outlying landing field) didn’t work. There was too much solid opposition from landowners, sportsmen, environmentalists, a feisty federal judge, state politicians and N.C. media. Two U.S. senators of the Administration’s political party, who early on hadn’t offered much support, also finally climbed aboard the NO-OLF bandwagon.
And the Navy at last sailed away from “Site C” near Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.
“It was a team effort,” said Joe Albea of Greenville, a outdoors television show producer and OLF opponent. “Many groups of people came together at the right time to get the job done.”
Most of the credit must go to the citizens of Beaufort and Washington counties and their leaders, including Mayors Brian Roth of Plymouth and Bunny Sanders of Roper, Marilyn and Phillip Lange of Edenton and their Albemarle Community Network, Jennifer Alligood and Doris Morris of the NO-OLF Coalition, Citizens against OLF, Southern Environmental Law Center and the Charlotte law firm of Kennedy Covington.
At first the task seemed almost impossible, given the powerful forces of the military and federal government determined to put the OLF at Site C. The national news media, particularly television networks, mostly ignored the story. A news crew from one network visited the site, filmed and interviewed local residents and politicians, then canned the story as it was about to be aired. The network is owned by a business with government contracts to produce equipment for the military, including the Navy. Was that a coincidence? Who knows?
Yet ordinary citizens of eastern N.C. wouldn’t surrender and kept holding the Navy’s feet to the fire.
The problem still exists for other areas of the state as the Navy considers two more N.C. OLF sites (and three in Virginia). However, residents in the N.C. counties (Currituck, Camden and Gates) are solidly opposed to having screaming jets flying overhead at all hours. Obviously, they must take hope from the victory of anti-OLF groups and individuals in Beaufort/Washington.
Some teachers recently held a workshop at Pocosin Lakes and saw 80,000 snow geese, thousands of tundra swans, bald eagles and eight black bears. One said: “Everyone needs to connect deeply with nature on a regular basis because nature speaks to us.”
“The birds actually got the victory,” Albea said.
That’s true — but only when people who love wildlife and the freedom to keep their property stood up to be counted.
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