News Briefs

Opponents of the Washington-Beaufort County outlying landing field for F/A-18 Super Hornets are expected to meet with North Carolina’s Washington delegation Wednesday.

About 50 eastern North Carolina residents along with representatives from concerned interest groups including the Audubon Society and Freedom/Works for a Sound Economy will be at the Canon House Office Building with Reps. G.K. Butterfield and David Price beginning at 9 a.m. to voice their opposition to the proposed 30,000-acre OLF near the Poscosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.

Court action has delayed the $186 million Navy project to train pilots for aircraft carrier landings. Opponents say the Navy did a poor job analyzing its potential harm to migrating birds like the 25,000 tundra swans and 65,000 snow geese which feed in farm fields west of the site.

The Navy is re-doing its Environmental Impact Statement on that site and four others including one in northwest Craven County but maintained in a brief filed last week that the planes will come no closer than two miles of the refuge.

Congress froze much of the money to complete the project until the U.S. Fourth District Court rules on a Navy appeal of a decision halting land purchases slated to begin July 20.