PORTLAND — The Air National Guard is reconsidering its environmental review of a proposal to let fighter jets fly as low as 500 feet over western Maine after getting a failing grade from the governor’s office and attracting attention for using an online encyclopedia as a source of information.
At the request of Maine Gov. John Baldacci, the guard postponed last week’s public hearing on the proposal’s draft environmental impact statement, according to Baldacci spokesman David Farmer.
In a letter asking for the postponement, Baldacci said the study was incomplete. He said it didn’t address the effects of noise on people and wildlife, dangers to other planes flying in the area, bird strikes or the effect on the Appalachian Trail and its users. Furthermore, he wrote, the Guard didn’t clearly show why low-level flight training is necessary.
The Air National Guard originally hoped to begin the training flights next month.
Farmer said it appeared the Guard merely took an earlier, shorter study and reworked it into the environmental impact statement. The study’s use of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which anyone can edit, as a source also caught attention, he said.
“It seems like the editing job on it was sloppy,” Farmer said.
Lt. Col. Lloyd Goodrow, spokesman for the Vermont Air National Guard, said Sunday that Guard pilots based in Vermont would be among those from several military branches who could use the airspace.
“We’re not the initiator of this process, but we would gain valuable training airspace if this were to happen,” he said. “But we respect the environmental process.”
Goodrow referred other questions to a Guard spokesman in Washington, who did not immediately respond to a message left Sunday.
The Air National Guard wants to make the changes in its 4,000-square-mile Condor Military Operation area in western Maine and a small area of northern New Hampshire. The training area is used primarily by guard units based in Vermont and Massachusetts.
The guard maintains that the flight deck needs to be lowered to ensure adequate low-altitude training for F-15 and F-16 pilots, who protect the U.S. border. But critics question whether training flights lower than the Washington Monument are necessary.
In 1992, the National Guard was denied in a request to lower the deck from 2,800 feet to 300 feet.
The guard had planned to hold the public hearing Wednesday in Farmington. But the week before, officials from the Maine Department of Transportation and other state agencies hosted a meeting with western Maine residents who opposed the proposal. Based on that meeting, the DOT, residents and the attorney general’s office came up with more than a dozen reasons why the environmental review fell short.
Baldacci has not taken a formal stance on the training flights. He merely wants the best information to be put forth during the process, Farmer said. The federal government will make the final decision.
“The governor recognizes that we live in an era where national security and the ability of National Guard flyers to respond to national security threats is important,” Farmer said. “What we’re trying to do is judge whether the training need is necessary, and then try to determine whether the necessity is high enough to offset the impacts.”