While local leaders fight to preserve each Navy plane, pilot and mechanic at Brunswick Naval Air Station, a new threat could be aimed at closing the base completely.
On Monday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is scheduled to appear before the Base Realignment and Closure Commission to answer why 13 installations – including the Brunswick base – were not targeted in May for closure by the Pentagon.
A day later, the commission will consider adding bases to its list.
“We have to be concerned about everything,” Sen. Olympia Snowe said Wednesday. “We don’t know what to expect on Monday with the secretary of defense.”
The case for Brunswick has been building since May, when the Pentagon targeted the base for realignment.
That realignment would send all of Brunswick’s planes and most of its active-duty personnel to a base in Jacksonville, Fla.
The base would stay open, demoted to the role of naval air facility.
Since May, Maine leaders have argued that Brunswick is strategically located to guard the Northeast, making it too valuable to reduce its ocean surveillance mission.
It’s an argument that ought to keep the base from closing, said Richard Tetrev, who’s leading the community effort to preserve the Brunswick.
“I believe we’re going to survive,” he said.
Nothing is certain, though. Leaders were alerted to the new problem on July 1, when the commission went public with its questions about Brunswick and other bases.
On the same day, the General Accounting Office released a report highlighting Brunswick and other installations where closure might save money. A representative from the GAO is also expected to testify to the commission on Monday.
However, the new hearings may be a case of the commission’s merely doing its duty.
Ralph Dean, a retired Navy captain who has spent two years working to preserve Brunswick, says he’s fairly confident that the base won’t be added to the closure list.
“I think they’re just giving the issue its due diligence,” Dean said of the commission.
Meanwhile, Maine’s congressional delegation and Gov. John Baldacci are doing the same. On Tuesday, during a conference call, they mapped out their plans for monitoring the hearings. Congressional staffers plan to attend.
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The group also has sent a new letter to the commission, repeating some of the same points made a week ago during a commission hearing in Boston on regional facilities, including the one in Brunswick.
“We are working on this issue every day because BNAS has a critical strategic location as well as the ability to support any aircraft in the Department of Defense inventory,” Sen. Susan Collins said Wednesday.
“The delegation will continue to provide information to the BRAC commissioners and staff and will continue to advocate for keeping BNAS fully operational,” she said.
Comfort can be found in the commission’s own rules, Snowe said.
For a base to be added to the closure list, seven of the group’s nine members must agree. That might be tough to get, she said.
Yet, anything can happen.
“It’s not in our hands,” Snowe said.
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