Congressmen Arrange Final Plea for Portsmouth Naval Shipyard
By Tim Heaney
WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 – Urgency hung like a fog over the discussion table as members of the Maine and New Hampshire congressional delegations sat down with the Seacoast Shipyard Association of Portsmouth on Tuesday to arrange a final plea to the Pentagon to keep the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard open.
Under the Defense Department’s Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) program, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will recommend in May which facilities should be closed. The secretary has promised to shed up to 25 percent of the nation’s military facilities.
“Time is running out,” retired U.S. Navy Captain William D. McDonough said at the roundtable discussion. “I’m growing very concerned. With the pattern that this is taking, this time around is giving us every indication that they’re seriously looking for our closure.”
McDonough, the spokesman for Seacoast, will lead the effort to plead the case in two separate half-hour meetings Wednesday morning with Pentagon and Navy officials.
This will mark the fifth time that McDonough has fought to prevent the closing of what the Portsmouth defenders call the nation’s most statistically efficient government-operated naval base. The shipyard dodged such attempts in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995, but McDonough said that this latest round could be the final blow.
He projects that the next round of Defense Department base closings will be bigger than the last four campaigns combined and that decreasing federal desires for submarine production and maintenance may jeopardize Portsmouth’s status.
The BRAC procedure calls for weighing eight standards of performance and efficiency, including both military and non-military utility, land availability and positive community impact.
While Seacoast will argue before the Pentagon that the shipyard meets all these standards, a nine-member BRAC commission, which must be selected by March 15, will have the final say. Two of those members will each be picked by the House and Senate Majority Leaders, and one will be picked by each of the Minority Leaders. President George W. Bush will pick the final three.
The commission will report its recommendations to the President in early September. The President then can either approve all of the commission’s recommendations or disapprove all of them. Congress will then have the same all-or-nothing option.
Congressman Jeb Bradley, R-N.H., echoed the sentiments of both states’ congressional delegations in emphasizing the shipyard’s importance in the economies of Maine and New Hampshire and stressed the base’s newest role of training the other three naval shipyards in submarine maintenance.
“Portsmouth has a long record of work, quality and refurbishing, and when you compare its capital and efficiency, the numbers put it above the other three bases,” Bradley said. “The case is just so compelling for the base to remain open.”
Over the 20-month BRAC process, the Maine and New Hampshire congressional delegation produced 17 letters addressed to Rumsfeld, Secretary of the Navy Gordon England and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Vern Clark showing support for the shipyard.
Bradley said that the Defense Department needs to realize that the shipyard’s efficiency is superior to privately owned yards such as the Electric Boat base in Connecticut.
“The fact that the Electric Boat is 50 percent over budget and 50 percent over timeline of production, that’s just an important fact,” Bradley said. “You cannot ignore those facts.”
Although Defense officials have doubts that Portsmouth could accommodate a large number of personnel during a “surge” in manpower, McDonough noted that while the shipyard now has only about 4,000 workers, it had as many as 25,000 within the last few years.
While the numbers speak in the group’s favor, the outcome is far from certain.
“I’m not optimistic,” McDonough said. “We are pleased to have the opportunity to speak with them, but that doesn’t mean anything. Those people will make no commitment to us.”
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