So far, the U.S. Navy’s campaign to build a so-called outlying landing field on a tract straddling the Washington-Beaufort county line has been based on repetition. Say it enough times that it would be safe to build a field where pilots could practice carrier landings in Super Hornet fighter jets just five miles from the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, and maybe it will be believed.But that contention remains a stretch. Thousands of large migratory birds winter in and around the refuge. Among other serious concerns, there’s the possibility of a goose or swan being sucked into a jet engine, or smashing into a windshield or wing. It’s not rocket science that such collisions can destroy an aircraft and put the crews at risk of injury or death.

Fortunately, the Navy’s OLF strategy hit a strong head wind this week, in the person of Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In a visit to the northeastern North Carolina site, Hall offered some common sense. “We have a national wildlife refuge whose purpose is to pull birds in,” he said. “The mission of the outlying landing field would be to push birds away.”

Hall points out that the sudden roar of jets could cause the flocks to flush, potentially sending many birds into the path of an aircraft. The danger would be even worse at night, when much of the training would be conducted.

The Navy has said it expects birds eventually would become habituated to the noise, but it’s hard to see how continual jet approaches and landings would not disturb the flocks to some degree. Certainly the experience of people visiting the refuge would be affected. Migratory birds are on the scene for about half the year. Training could be cut back during those periods, but constraints on the site’s usability would undercut its value.

In a revised environmental study, the Navy recently proposed altering the crops normally grown on and around the OLF site to make those areas less attractive to foraging birds. Understandably, that’s not been a popular suggestion with farmers who are geared up to raise winter wheat and corn.

The Navy also said the pesticide Avitrol could be used to control bird populations that impinged on the landing field. In response, the state Wildlife Resources Commission properly objects. “No Avitrol product registered in North Carolina is labeled for controlling any waterfowl species,” the commission wrote to Governor Easley. The commission added its fear that non-target animals might consume the bait or consume birds that had been killed by it.

Meanwhile, residents, many of whose families have farmed the region for generations, resent that their way of life and the crops they grow would be forced to change by the Navy. Easley recently asked Congress to block funding for the site, asserting with justification that the Navy still has not seriously considered alternative locations that the state would regard as suitable. House Speaker Joe Hackney and Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler are among those who also have signaled their opposition in the past few days.

There’s good reason for a consensus here that the Navy, if it’s determined to build an OLF in North Carolina, simply needs to do better in picking a site. Hall’s cogent assessment of the Washington-Beaufort site’s poor fit with a nationally significant wildlife refuge now helps prove the point.

Paid for by the Mike Easley Committee