Update on the Mayport Carrier Situation

from Navy Times---- status update

Mayport carrier move delayed, lawmaker says

The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Apr 22, 2010 17:57:55 EDT

NORFOLK, Va. — The Navy has delayed the controversial move of an aircraft carrier from Virginia to Florida until 2019, five years later than initially proposed, according to a Virginia congressman.

Rep. Glenn Nye, a Democrat from the Virginia Beach region, said commanders at Naval Station Mayport informed him of the delay during a fact-finding mission to the Florida base this week.

“After seeing the lack of capability at Mayport, and knowing what we have here in Norfolk, it’s going to take a lot more time and money than the Navy has previously stated to homeport a nuclear carrier here,” Nye said in a statement. He said 2019 was the earliest move date.

The Navy did not immediately respond Thursday to e-mail and telephone messages from The Associated Press.

Naval Station Norfolk is the lone East Coast home to nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, with five of the warships based at the world’s largest naval base. The proposed move, outlined in the Navy’s defense planning document in February, is based on national security concerns about having all East Coast carriers homeported in Norfolk.

Hampton Roads officials, as well as Gov. Bob McDonnell and members of Virginia’s congressional delegation, have loudly complained and vowed to block funding approaching $1 billion to upgrade Mayport for one of the massive ships.

Sen. Mark Warner’s office said Thursday the Virginia Democrat had not been informed of any delay, but said it would be consistent with his argument that the Navy should focus on “more urgent and significant priorities than this costly and time-consuming exercise in redundancy.”

Warner, Nye and Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., all have argued that the Navy hasn’t made the national security case to move the carrier.

The Hampton Roads region stands to lose 6,000 jobs, half of those sailors aboard a carrier, and $425 million in annual revenue if a carrier permanently sails to Mayport.

The Jacksonville-area base lost the conventionally powered John F. Kennedy in 2007, when it was decommissioned.