Contract military guards asleep...literally. Do we want this at NWS Earle?

Once the Department of Navy opens Laurelwood housing to civilians by its intended deadline of September, 2010, the base commander (whether current Capt. Maynard or a successor) and his security team will be responsible for the ensuing 30 years for policing the new 2-mile road from Rt. 34 to the homes, in addition to enhancing security and bringing on additional staff to keep civilians out of the fully functional areas of a facility w/300 bunkers of bombs and ammo.

Currently, the Department of the Navy uses contract security guards to supplement the seemingly thin staff of Naval police who patrol the base and cover 2nd- and 3rd-shift duties. The company that provides this service is Myers Investigative & Security, apparently of Dunn, NC. (Myers' legacy website is no longer available, and as is the case with many private military contractors, it is often difficult to trace the whereabouts of executives or contacts with these service providers).

Anyway, the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Defense, in this report issued in January of 2009 at the request of Congressman Chris Smith, found that Weapons Station Earle failed to prove background checks on Myers guards working within its lines, nor did it maintain proper oversight of these (essentially) rent-a-cops.

This becomes all the more unsettling in light of this Associated Press story, citing a report from the Commission on Wartime Contracting, today that an Army sergeant at a U.S. military base in Kuwait not only found a contract security guard leaning back in a chair, apparently sound asleep while on duty, but that defense auditors also found at least $6 billion of questionable charges where contractors are bilking the military.

Now what does a contract security guard asleep on the job in Kuwait, plus the bilking of the DoD have to do with guards at Earle or NOPE? As U.S. taxpayers...EVERYTHING!

Even bluer in the face, NOPE continues to argue that the costs to the Department of Navy to enforce the civilian occupancy portion of an outdated private military housing contract will not only nullify the Navy's presumed savings (the Navy says it will cost too much to buy out the deal and needs to open Laurelwood to civilian renters), but introduce the base to all sorts of threats to the core mission of transporting and storing explosives. The last thing we in the NOPE community need, outside of the financial devastation to our towns, is for a contract guard at Earle to fall asleep on the job and for something bad to happen at the base.

Seriously, you cannot make this stuff up...

APP Promos Oct. 27 NOPE Rally

Submitted by our Communications Director, Diana Piotrowski, and picked up in the Oct. 5 edition. Again, anyone in the communities surrounding Weapons Station Earle should attend this rally on October 27, 2009 at 730pm at Colts Neck High School.

Who are the Navy's appraisers anyway?

A lack of funding is the alleged stumbling block to the Department of the Navy's reluctance to buy out the Laurelwood housing contract at Naval Weapons Station Earle and prevent turning a section of the 11,000-acre mainside military weapons storage base in Colts Neck into an all-access civilian housing complex through 2040 and a potential terror target.

For those new to our case, the Department of the Navy argues it would be prohibitively expensive to settle with Laurelwood Homes, LLC (its developer who built the homes for military personnel in the late-1980s) on a buyout - one of two remedies proposed by NOPE; the other is outright cancellation (i.e. void the deal, as some contract language would facilitate)...on the order of $110-$120 million. Laurelwood's attorney, meanwhile, admits to the media that this Navy estimate is grossly inflated, and that his client - Teri Fischer - would take far less.

NOPE estimates the value of the 300 Laurelwood homes at $17-$20 million, based on several factors (housing upgrade and road construction costs to Ms. Fischer, contractual teardown of the homes and replenishment of the land to its "original state" in September 2040, depreciation, local real estate market values, environmental remediation, etc.)

Anyway...based a) on the disparity in NOPE's figures vs. the Department of the Navy's (no one has refuted our estimates, namely the Navy...and we are merely a grassroots coalition of volunteer efforts, not appraisal experts as you would expect the Navy would have), and citing b) some financial details about halfway into this September 22, 2009 report from The Hill on a landgrab over the Navy's shuttered Treasure Island base near San Francisco, it is pretty clear that U.S. Navy appraisers may have zero clue about property appraisal.

How else could you explain the roughly $100 million disparity between our estimate and the Navy's over the value of the existing 300 Laurelwood homes on the base, as well as its apparent $220-$230 million overestimate of the value of Treasure Island versus appraisers for both the City of San Francisco as well as the respected, independent KPMG?

In our view, it is just another example of how there is the Department of Navy is being guided or advised by people with no business sense, and that unfortunately, in our case to prevent civilians from ever residing at NWS Earle, the residents of the Monmouth County communities surrounding NWS Earle are left in the crosshairs of crippling behind-the-scenes deal-making.

Oct. 27 NOPE RALLY coming together

Keep your eyes posted within the next week for NOPE lawn signs promoting our rally at Colts Neck High School on Tuesday, October 27, 2009.

We encourage any supporters who want to put one on their lawn or somewhere in their neighborhood to email us at njNOPE@gmailcom or justsaynope@verizon.net, or to call Diana at 732.946.3474 or Bill at 732.544.8595. Otherwise, we are offering community service hours to any groups in need to those who can help us distribute flyers the weekends of Oct. 17 & 24.

NOPE in action at Tinton Falls Community Day

Courtesy of Fulton Wilcox, our Business Analyst, pictured next to NOPE Communications Director Diana Piotrowski, along with our Political Liaison Elaine Mann (black jacket), speaking with one of the many visitors to our table last Saturday afternoon. NOPE again appreciates the opportunity to meet new members of the community and bring them up to speed about our efforts to prevent civilian housing at Weapons Station Earle.

Here's an idea: tours of NWS Earle for area townspeople

After a brief visit to the Seal Beach Daily blog, it appears the Navy recently opened the California base for a "media familiarization tour" for Internet-based news organizations. What does this have to do with NOPE or civilian housing at Weapons Station Earle, you might ask?

Well, it signals that it is perhaps time for NWS Earle to invite not bloggers or internet media, but rather the residents of the base's primary host towns of Colts Neck, Tinton Falls and Middletown - to tour the base, from portside to mainside - a "Citizens Familiarization Tour," if you will.

If the U.S. Navy can invite bloggers into Seal Beach to watch the offloading of a Naval ship and "tour a super-fortified weapons storage facility to see the Tomahawks stacked there," among other events, why shouldn't Earle's commander be secure enough to present to the area townspeople (by and large mortified about security breaches and hundreds of millions of dollars of financial ruin that will stem from proposed civilian housing at Earle) a picture of what goes on at the base, perhaps to allay our fears about a presumed 1,500 civilians or more renters setting up residence on the base as soon as September 2010?

Perhaps it has to do with the Navy's bent to keep a shroud of secrecy over what's really going on behind the scenes as Earle prepares to clear the way for the civilian access road to the homes by the April 30, 2010 deadline, much as it did in written regulatory documents that fell well short of compliance with federal guidelines. Or maybe it is to conceal the fact that the U.S. Inspector General already found Earle significantly lacking in its oversight of contract security guards that it hires (at a steep price) to help watch over the base.

Whatever the reason, if nothing else, one could argue that the U.S. Navy should be secure enough about its own security to let the townspeople surrounding NWS Earle to take a tour and perhaps dispel NOPE's contention that things will go awry with a new civilian town popping up within the bases perimeter fence line by the middle of next year.

For NOPE's "new" followers

Between the comments and questions of visitors to our table at Tinton Falls Community Day, and an email exchange between the leaders of NOPE about publicizing the need for a jampacked rally at Colts Neck High on Tuesday, October 27 (730pm), it seems appropriate to offer a Cliff's Notes rehash for our "newer" followers a few reasons why the U.S. Navy plan to let civilians live on Weapons Station Earle by next September is a horrendous idea for your community.

• Opening an active military weapons facility (300 bunkers worth) to anyone is an obvious threat to your security (post-9/11) as an area resident, and will become a distraction to the base's primary mission (to provide munitions to the fleet) and expose Earle's guards to terror attacks: The Navy intends to build an unguarded 2-mile access route from Rt. 34 (about 500 yards south of the extremely well-guarded main gate in Colts Neck) thru the base and to the Laurelwood homes, which the builder can rent to anyone with the ability to pay the reported $1,600-$2,200 monthly rent, all without background checks. This will require, as written in our business case analysis, the Navy to handle (and provide funding for) all emergency matters, with Earle's personnel serving as the de facto police, fire and EMT squad for 300 civilian families from 30 years, through 2040 - when, by contract, the homes must be torn down anyway. To be sure, we have blogged here about plans by a North Carolina man and others to kill guards at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia.
• Taxes and Education: Introducing 300 new civilian families (with 2- thru 4-bedroom townhouses at Earle by next September, we can safely assume at last 1,500 residents at full capacity) not paying property taxes to either Colts Neck or Tinton Falls (the current host to K-thru-8 school-aged kids) will impose at least a $300 million school tax burden on Tinton Falls (or Colts Neck, Howell or some other surround district), depending on the outcome of a lawsuit filed by Tinton Falls over the state law that now allows Earle's Navy dependents to leave their district (Colts Neck) to attend Tinton Falls schools. Regardless of who ends up the host for Laurelwood school-aged kids in the end (right now, Tinton Falls taxpayers subsidize about $1 million per year of the cost to educate the 80-90 current military dependents residing in other homes at Earle), our own kids' education and public school quality will be greatly compromised.
• Civilian housing will require the host school district to construct new schools; we put the price tag at roughly $50 million for one new school. And we, the local residents, will be left holding the bag (i.e. unused school capacity) when the Laurelwood homes are leveled in 2040.
• Environmental questions: The EPA has yet to address our concern about the presumed overlap of the new road to Laurelwood with an EPA Superfund site that is, by law, not allowed to be disturbed. Otherwise, we are concerned about potential exposure of any civilian residents or visitors to harmful chemicals that are all part of what ultimately is a "dirty business" of handling military explosives and munitions.
• The U.S. Navy (someone in Washington, not anyone at Earle itself) is going thru with this civilian housing deal, presumably, SIMPLY TO GET OUT OF A BAD CONTRACT IT SIGNED IN THE 1980s AND TO AVOID THE APPROPRIATE ALTERNATIVE - VOID OR BUY OUT THE DEAL.
• The ONLY PARTY that will profit/benefit from letting civilians live at Weapons Station Earle is a private contractor based in the Seattle, Washington area - Laurelwood Homes, LLC. We estimate that Laurelwood has already taken in roughly $75 million on the first 20 years of the contract. Did the homes (built in the late 1980s and almost totally vacant for the better part of the last decade) really cost that much to build and maintain?

These are just a few of the reasons you must attend our rally on October 27 and show the U.S. Navy that, together, we will not stand for this!!!

Tinton Falls Day a HUGE Success - 60 New Supporters!

Kudos to Diana Piotrowski, Elaine Mann and Fulton and Susan Wilcox of NOPE for braving the elements this past Saturday and running our table at what turned out to be a successful Tinton Falls Community Day, and thanks to Beth Hessek, Chairperson of the event, and her committee, for allowing us to participate!

The hundreds of people we met in the borough appeared extremely receptive to our message, and 60 "new" supporters joined our mailing list. We also are excited about the interest shown by some of the groups in the Tinton Falls Community, namely from members of the EMT, Fire Department and area youth groups (i.e. Girl and Boy Scouts), and look forward to their participation in our October 27 rally - 730p at Colts Neck High.

Anyone wishing to join our mailing list can do so either by signing our online petition at the main-page bottom of our legacy website (http://www.orgsites.com/nj/nope/) or via email at justsaynope@verizon.net or njNOPE@gmail.com.

Visit NOPE at Tinton Falls Day

Please stop by and visit NOPE's Communications Director Diana Piotrowski and Business Analyst Fulton Wilcox at Tinton Falls Day, today from 3p-7p at the Sycamore Avenue Soccer Complex (next to Mahala F. Atchison School). Diana and Fulton will be there not only to promote NOPE's Oct. 27 rally, but also to distribute literature and answer any questions about the Laurelwood housing situation at Weapons Station Earle in Colts Neck, and the impact it will have, particularly on the Tinton Falls and Colts Neck communities.

U.S. terror suspects accused of targeting Marine base

On the heels of our analysis yesterday of the terror attack drill conducted at Fort Monmouth and how it relates to our case at Earle, Reuters reports that the two men charged in North Carolina last month with plotting terror attacks overseas also planned to attack the U.S. Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, authorities said on Thursday.

A new indictment against "alleged" ringleader Daniel Patrick Boyd (see past NOPE blogs about Mr. Boyd, about a month ago) and Hysen Sherifi charges the men with conspiring to murder U.S. military personnel and possessing armor piercing ammunition. Clearly these are wonderful, upstanding civilians .... As Reuters reports:

"These additional charges hammer home the grim reality that today's home-grown terrorists are not limiting their violent plans to locations overseas, but instead are willing to set their sights on American citizens and American targets, right here at home," U.S. Attorney George E.B. Holding said.

Reiterating yesterday's commentary, NOPE scratches its collective head wondering why, considering the wealth of knowledge we have on global terrorism and military bases now on the radars of terrorists, U.S. Navy leaders in Washington are so eager to build an unimpeded civilian access road thru the heart of Weapons Station Earle, all for the sake of obligating a 30-year housing privatization contract that has nothing to do with enhancing the base's mission. We encourage our supporters to challenge their elected officials and the U.S. Navy on this, and to attend our October 27 rally at Colts Neck High School.

Fort Monmouth drill validates NOPE's concern about proposed civilian housing at Earle and threat of base attack

Roughly a month after we blogged here about a hostage drill at Weapons Station Earle, we find Fort Monmouth conducting an emergency readiness drill, simulating a terror attack. Interesting, in that by 2012 there will presumably be no more U.S. Army mission at Fort Monmouth, but that's another story...

Our takeaway from Fort Monmouth's drill (read the full text of the story in today's Asbury Park Press), other than the emergency responders did such a great job that the commander wrapped up the exercise two hours ahead of schedule (Miller time!), is that the drill was designed to simulate a rocket-propelled grenade attack on a building on the base, fired by a terrorist from the parking lot of a nearby dentist's office!

"We never try to test the "powder puff' scenarios," said Michael Ruane of the
James Thomas Group, a garrison contractor that designed and ran Wednesday's
event.

NOPE recognizes the need of our nearby military bases to conduct emergency response drills, but the respective planning by the U.S. Navy for a hostage drill and the U.S. Army of a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the base suggest to us that opening an active U.S. military munitions facility (NWS Earle) to civilians is idiotic to the highest order.

The notion of opening an unimpeded, roughly 2-mile long access road to the Laurelwood houses at Earle from Rt. 34 in Colts Neck and cutting, in essence, right behind the extremely well guarded main gate at the Navy base flies in the face of reason, and will leave open the possibility of more than just a "drill" at one of our most important weapons installations.

Imagine, if you will, droves of unchecked cars coming and going to the Laurelwood homes, traversing the new "Alternate 4" road selected by the U.S. Navy, and the possibility of one car stopping along the shoulder of this new $12 million road (cordoned off from the active base by a mere 7 feet of rented security fencing but running squarely thru the base) to launch a grenade attack on a U.S. Navy train ready to move explosives to a U.S. Navy ship at the harborside base in Middletown, or perhaps to fire upon a building that houses active Navy service members or private contractors working within the confines of a supposedly secure Naval Weapons Station Earle...

How would Navy leaders in Washington explain to the U.S. public that a dozen of its own service members were killed because of its own stubbornness to get out of an 80s-era privatized housing contract?

Again, the options are: a) no unimpeded access route, no civilian housing at Weapons Station Earle, and diminished threat of an attack within the boundaries of the Navy base, or b) free access to Laurelwood for the 1,200 or more presumed civilian residents at Earle and ANY visitors from 2010-2040, compromised base security, and the possibility of a disaster at a strategically important mission.

YOU decide...attend our RALLY at Colts Neck High, Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 730pm, and visit our table at Tinton Falls Day, this Saturday, September 26 from 3p-7p, at the Sycamore Soccer Complex along Sycamore Avenue, next to Atchison School.

SAVE THE DATE: NOPE RALLY, Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Specifics to follow, but NOPE will be staging an autumn rally at the Colts Neck High School auditorium on Tuesday, October 27 at 730 p.m. Stay tuned!

Civilian housing at Earle would cost U.S. taxpayers AT LEAST $360 MILLION

Roughly a month away from a big community rally we are planning, it is appropriate on a slow Monday in the NOPE news cycle to redirect readers' attention to the business case analysis we released last November, justifying the financial merits of an outright revocation or buyout of the Laurelwoood housing "outlease" (i.e. the portion covering civilian housing).

Candidly, your Navy leaders in Washington have been remiss to address such analysis, billing it as "too complicated" to analyze (see the Laurelwood EIS for full text). We are hopeful, however, that the Senate's GAO will expose what NAVFAC egregiously ignored throughout the Laurelwood Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and public comment process - that unless OUR local communities speak up, Laurelwood becomes OUR financial mess - and that the Navy and its developer will amicably reach a resolution and alleviate our headache.

The analysis considers perpetual and one-time costs and risks not only to the U.S. taxpayer through 2040 (at least a $300 million obligation, mostly to Earle-area residents, largely in terms of educational costs), but to the U.S. Navy itself (at least $60 million) if it goes thru with the civilian outlease. We would encourage all visitors to take a look at this easy-to-follow 8-page brief and invite any questions or comments at njNOPE@gmail.com and/or justsaynope@verizon.net.

Good news from the Menendez office

Senators Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg have co-signed a letter to the top-ranking Senate and House Armed Services committee "conferees" (John McCain among them), urging inclusion of Congressman Chris Smith's amendment (already approved in the House) to F2010 defense spending legislation that would require the GAO to study the security and financial ramifications to all stakeholders of proposed Laurelwood civilian housing at NWS Earle.

This is good news to NOPE. The need for the letter is a technical matter as it relates to D.C. politics, but nonetheless validates the merits of NOPE's argument that the Laurelwood EIS put forth by Navy factfinders is utterly flawed, short on facts, and misleading to federal, state and local agencies required to comment on the "environmental impact statement."

Two New Contacts in the Blogosphere

NOPE has reached out to one member of the blogosphere - Michael Schindler, a Navy veteran and contributor to The Washington Times, as well as the Founder of Operation Military Family - in hopes that he will share our story with his readers.

Mr. Schindler's blog, The Military Wire (link embedded), discusses and raises "public awareness on issues that affect our service members and their families," and NOPE sees (among the slew of obvious pitfalls of civilians living on an active weapons base) the Laurelwood housing issue as a major compromise of the quality of life of the active service members living in other housing (i.e. Stark Road) at Weapons Station Earle, not to mention a significant compromise of base security and a distraction to Earle's singular mission to provide ammunition to the U.S. fleet (i.e. MPs pulling cars over for speeding on the proposed "Alternative #4" entry road to Laurelwood or settling domestic disputes at a Laurelwood home, rather than focusing on guarding weapons shipments from the bayfront installation to the Main Base in Colts Neck).

We also have heard from Amy Fankhauser of Howell TRUTH, a grassroots school-budget advocacy group that apparently has been keeping tabs on our case and encouraging greater resident participation in Howell (NJ) BOE matters in light of budget contraints that prompted the district to close Southard School. For some time we have tried to engage Howell's (a member of the Freehold Regional school district) elected leaders (and all elected township officials throughout Monmouth County) in support of our cause, and perhaps the contact with Howell TRUTH and other grassroots groups will prove the catalyst to such support.

We'll keep you posted on the results of this outreach.

Quick Update on our EPA challenge

NOPE's own Charles Basile of Colts Neck, whose firm, the Wall Street Group (of Jersey City), has graciously donated many of the printed materials distributed by us since inception, received a letter from EPA Region 2 chief John Filippelli that amounted to an implicit copout that a) the EPA can only take the Navy at its word that breaching the Laurelwood contract is not a "reasonable alternative" to the "No Build Alternative" we have long espoused, and b) yes, the Navy should have released its EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) much earlier than it did in order to give the EPA more time to study environmental alternatives to opening up the Laurelwood houses on the base to civilian occupants. In our view, these answers are unacceptable from an agency whose presumed mission is environmental protection. (Breaching an EPA Superfund site in addition to displacing wetlands and wreaking environmental havoc, as the Navy will do to obligate the civilian out-lease portion of the Laurelwood contract, seems to fit this description).

Fulton Wilcox, who along with Diana Piotrowski has spearheaded our EPA case, is organizing NOPE's response, which NOPE will share here once finished, and in the meantime we will continue to press environmental officials on the Navy's misleading "purpose and need."

1988 Department of Navy letter raises questions about original motive to extend the Laurelwood housing contract by 20 years

We highly recommend that anyone seeking documentation pertaining either to the Laurelwood housing situation at Weapons Station Earle or any other endeavor requiring extensive research of federal documents invoke the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). With experience as our guide, the coordinators of this program are relentless in their pursuit of fulfilling citizens' information requests - a tremendous service to U.S. taxpayers.

NOPE's earliest request yielded a treasure trove of documents, namely the actual contract and more than 70 supplement agreements between the U.S. Navy and its developer (email us if you would like a copy), now called Laurelwood Homes LLC. With such access, we were able to discover that the Navy is bad when it comes to the bargaining table, seemingly giving up its right in 2002 to invoke federal National Emergency rules in order to nullify the Laurelwood housing contract at no cost - all so a private developer could refinance the mortgage and rake in over $200 million in rents for 52 years when all is said and done. We also learned from these documents that, unbeknownst to the public - as should have been disclosed in NAVFAC's "Environmental Impact Statement" (EIS) on the Laurelwood civilian housing plan - that U.S. taxpayers might be on the hook for another $20 million if Laurelwood cannot find tenants for the 300 homes by September 2010. Both sides say NOPE has misinterpreted the language of "Supplement Lease No. 43", but our attorneys beg to differ.

Yesterday, another document showed up in our chairman's mailbox - an understated two-sentence letter (attached) signed by then-Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Shipbuilding and Logistics) Keith E. Eastin in 1988. Apparently, Mr. Eastin, who remains involved in installations management with the U.S. Army, ruled that adding 20 years to the lease (and implicitly signing off on civilian housing at Earle thru 2040) was a good idea to "promote the national defense."

NOPE's legal team will follow up on this letter and perhaps track down Mr. Eastin for further details on the history of the Laurelwood contract and why it was essential for the Navy to open up Weapons Station Earle to civilian occupants for 30 years, rather than ending the privatized Laurelwood housing contract as soon as 2020 (as the attached letter would indicate).

Stay tuned for more details. NOPE remains baffled about how civilian housing on an active weapons facility already thin on security personnel promotes the national defense.

One Poet's Reflections Eight Years After 9/11

Today's post is somewhat outside the scope of our typical mission to inform NOPE supporters and the general public about the Laurelwood housing situation at Weapons Station Earle, but a Middletown-based blogger poet by the pseudonym "findingmyroom" eloquently encapsulates thoughts and emotions of so many of us living outside NYC and how the 9-11 terror attacks turned our attention to Weapons Station Earle as a target.

"Never did anyone think they (the Twin Towers) would fall at the whim of a group of fanatics with box cutters on planes," as written by findingmyroom, is especially striking, considering that some of us in NOPE either were in NYC that morning or worked at Fort Monmouth or Earle, which clamped down on security in the aftermath and continues to heighten security measures to get on the base - precisely why the U.S. Navy's decision to open an unimpeded civilian access route to the Laurelwood housing complex is all the more baffling. We still have yet to hear a logical reason (i.e., the Laurelwood EIS was utterly incomplete, lacking in relevant security and financial impact assessments) for cutting a hole in the security fencing a few hundred yards south of the main gate on Rt. 34 of a massive military weapons installation; obligating an 80s-era privatized housing contract is not a sufficient reason to compromise national and regional security.

Gone are the days of the community softball leagues at Earle's ballfields and other feel-good community events on the base, replaced by justifiable concerns among citizens well beyond the list of our thousands of supporters...not so much about what the present security force at Earle is doing, but about the greater potential for domestic terrorism and NWS Earle as a potential target in the wake of 9/11.

Details on October NOPE Rally to come

Members of NOPE's leadership team met last night to set in motion plans for a major rally in late-October, most likely in Colts Neck. Please stay tuned here for details on specific date, time and location, which we expect to square away by next week.

Let's be clear that NOPE's fight is far from finished, and that people in the surrounding communities need to get off the couch and show up for our events, as was the case with big turnouts to our 2008 and early 2009 briefings. Our 3,000 supporters, and others still oblivious to our battle, need to know more about all of the time and effort NOPE and our elected leaders (Representatives Smith and Holt, Senators Lautenberg and Menendez, the District 12 team of Beck-O'Scanlan-Casagrande, local elected officials) have put forth, and how we will prevail in this battle to stop civilian residents from ever stepping foot on Weapons Station Earle.

We still have several coals on the fire as the Navy's contract compliance deadline nears in April 2010, and need to continue to turn the screws to prevent a bad situation that everyone but the Navy itself knows will compromise base and national security, devastate our school districts and taxpayers financially and impact the environment. EVERYONE IN THE COMMUNITY NEEDS TO COME OUT TO THIS EVENT AND STAY INFORMED, and we will have more details in the days and weeks to come.

NOPE files another environmental challenge, re: convergence of planned Laurelwood access route and EPA Superfund site

This afternoon we are mailing another challenge to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, questioning the apparent overlap of the Navy's route selection (i.e. "Alternative 4" from the EIS) to the Laurelwood homes and a 6-acre area designated a "Do Not Disturb" area near the planned unimpeded civilian entrance at the eastern-most point (on the map that we've linked, near the blue circle on the right) of Macassar Road, within Weapons Station Earle.

In addition to EPA Region 2 Strategic Planning Chief John Filippelli, NOPE has sent similar letters to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Mark Mauriello, Monmouth County Public Health Coordinator Michael Meddis, as well as to Thomas Frieden, Administrator for the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) in Atlanta, GA.

This latest environmental discovery was the handiwork of Diana Piotrowski, NOPE's Communications Director, who upon reviewing the Laurelwood Final EIS for the umpteenth time, this time against an ATSDR Public Health Assessment of Weapons Station Earle in August of 2006, identified that Site 1 (shown in Appendix A-1 in the ATSDR's report) "is restricted" and portrayed as an area with "infrequent" human contact.

In short, Site 1 (one of 29 EPA Superfund sites at NWS Earle) was an area where the Navy burned ordnance materials from 1943-1975 and was thereafter plowed over and burned (using diesel-soaked hay) three times and declared as a restricted area. ATSDR's map (see Figure 2 on page 41 of the report) put Site 1 at about the same spot where part of Alternative 4 is expected to run, prompting us to question whether the U.S. Navy's EIS guidance and selection of route Alternative #4 infringes upon a restricted environmental area.

Our letters to the above-noted agencies request clarification to NOPE about this coincidence, if not a full-scale investigation into the convergence of ATSDR Site 1 and Laurelwood Final EIS Alternative 4, and the impact of road construction to that area, not to mention potential harmful exposure to chromium, explosives compounds and petroleum hydrocarbons to both Naval personnel residing in Stark Road Housing and the presumed civilian occupants at Laurelwood.

NOPE welcomes any contact with resident environmental experts on this issue, and encourages you to email or call us (732.322.0130) pertaining to this issue if you can assist in our environmental challenges of the Laurelwood civilian housing plan. Otherwise, we will keep you posted here on the EPA, DEP, Monmouth County and ATSDR response to our query.

Navy in motion on DEP permit application; no major surprise

NOPE has obtained a copy of NAVFAC's (the Navy's facilities management arm) letter of intent to apply for permits on its planned civilian access route thru Weapons Station Earle and to the Laurelwood housing development - a perceived first step in the Navy's plans to begin work on the project. We have attached a copy of the letter submitted August 6, 2009 to the DEP, though the language does not make clear whether the Navy is simply lining up its environmental maps with those of the state's environmental watchdog, or whether this is a sort of "fast-track" effort to obtain permits.

If you recall, it appears that the Navy has until April 30, 2010, to fully clear the route (i.e. remove trees, handle wetlands issues) upon which Laurelwood Homes LLC, the owner of the 300 homes at Weapons Station Earle to be converted to civilian housing, would then pay for and pave the road before opening up the homes for rental to any civilian.

Unless the DEP officials we met and our state representatives blatently lied to NOPE that the DEP will not fast-track the permits, we suspect that the Navy will breach its contract with Laurelwood (i.e., unable to complete the clearing work by the end of next April, per terms of the contract) and Mrs. Fischer, owner of the 300 homes, will sue the Navy, sending the fate of the proposed civilian housing project into litigation.

NOPE will remain in contact with District 12 Senator Beck and Assembly members O'Scanlan and Casagrande on this issue, asking them to watchdog the DEP to ensure that NAVFAC is not given fast-track permits or precedence over other applications in the DEP's permit queue.

Quick Update

We hope this finds you well approaching Labor Day!

As late August-early September has been vacation time for many of the core NOPE group, we have been pretty quiet bloggers the past 10-12 days, but stay tuned over the next week for some new discoveries regarding our environmental case and as we closely watch whether the Smith Amendment to the FY2010 Defense Authorization Act that already passed the House will pass in the Senate version. As we speak, we are taking steps to promote passage on the Senate level.

In the meantime, we encourage you to take a look at some of the older posts explaining NOPE's bid to prevent civilian housing at NWS Earle.

Red Bank Hub: NOPE continues opposition

The Hub story is nice publicity, but flawed in a few ways, namely that NOPE encourages the Navy to exercise its contractual right to void the Laurelwood housing contract, which it says it will not do (why, we do not know). With this in mind, we recommend the Navy meet Seattle-based developer Teri Fischer halfway and work toward an amicable buyout to make this housing debacle and security threat disappear - basically, put Navy and local resident interests ahead of those of a housing developer 3,000 miles away.

Be clear...NOPE in no way is a mouthpiece for the developer, Seattle-based Teri Fischer, nor will we ever be, and in fact we'd feel no remorse if her company walked away without a cent on the outlease portion of the contract (i.e. the civilian residency clause that runs from September 2010 to 2040). Her company has already netted some $75 million of rental payments from the Navy since 1990. THAT very clear assertion was left out of the Hub story. We continue to make clear that the Navy would be well within its rights to void the deal under grounds of a declared national emergency, as stated in the contract. (Anyone seeking a copy of the full contract can email us at justsaynope@verizon.net or post an email address in the comment section below; we'd be happy to forward it to you after having obtained it through open public records acts.)

Otherwise, the Hub story slants heavily toward the school issue and contains some misinformation. Simply, NOPE's stance is that NO TOWN in the surrounding area should ever educate a single civilian occupant that might live at Laurelwood...period! We sense that what could end up happening (and it seems a few politicians are leaning toward this in the event civilians ever live at Laurelwood) is that the Monmouth County Superintendent could split the kids among many surrounding districts (i.e. each district within 10-15 miles of Earle takes 30-50 kids to "soften the blow"). BOEs and school superintendents outside Colts Neck and Tinton Falls should be paying close attention to this issue, and call their state legislators to question their leaders on this issue and discourage such a notion.

The essential piece of the overall Laurelwood housing story, which is buried in the Hub piece and that no one in the commercial media seems to recognize or care to explore, is the Laurelwood contract itself and how the U.S. Navy (read: not NWS Earle commanding officer, Captain Maynard, or anyone working at the base, but a much higher decision-maker within the Navy ranks in Washington, D.C.) has put its Monmouth County neighbors in jeopardy on account of a short-sighted contract and mulish thinking. Our interpretation is that Contract Amendment No. 43 signed in 2002 sends the parties (the Navy and Laurelwood Homes, LLC) to buyout negotiations by default if the Navy fails to comply with the April 30, 2010 deadline to clear the planned 1.7-mile access route to the homes. And the bottom line is that some high-ranking official or Navy number cruncher, seemingly with no clue or interest about the impact to our communities, is going to severely compromise the mission at NWS Earle by inviting civilians to live on its otherwise secure grounds. Preposterous...

Laurelwood and Anti-War Protesters

One of our supporters brings up an interesting hypothetical for the Navy: how will NWS Earle react if civilian anti-war, or other types of protesters, take up residence at the base's Laurelwood housing? We pose this question, knowing that some of our blog's most-avid visitors are from the Navy (40% since we launched the blog on July 1; we have the data to back this up - it's not a contrived figure).

Navy officials need look no further than Olympia, Washington, home to protest groups United for Peace and Olympia Port Militarization Resistance (OPMR, which objects to use of civilian ports for shipments to Iraq). AP reports allegations the Army illegally infiltrated OPMR, whose members "sometimes engaged in civil disobedience by trying to block the shipments," and about 200 protestors were arrested amid protests in November 2007, as two videos from YouTube (video 1, video 2) showing police pepperspraying seemingly peaceful protests would attest.

We have not seen these sorts of protests in our area, but should the war in Afghanistan and occupation of Iraq drag on, the likelihood of more protests in more places increases. It would be pretty awkward for the Navy having protesters residing on the base and engaging in action on a road that dissects the base, rather than just demonstrating in the streets like in Olympia, WA.

Shooting & Hostage Drill at Earle raises NOPE's doubts about law enforcement self-sufficiency

It appears that earlier this month a drill was conducted to prepare Navy security personnel at NWS Earle Mainside and other law enforcement interests for a scenario where "a sailor is shot by her husband in their temporary quarters aboard (the) base" who then "flees the scene."

That this scenario (which evidently involved the base command, Earle tenants, NCIS, customs agents and state and local police) was played out in "temporary quarters" could support a view of this drill as a precursor to what could happen (whether the miscreant is a relative of a sailor or a crazed civilian resident) once the base becomes overrun with civilian occupants and visitors come September 2010, unless the Navy reverses course on an otherwise ridiculous plan for what to do with largely vacant Laurelwood housing.

Parsing through the Navy jargon in this puff piece written by an Earle PR person, the drill was part of Earle's Higher Headquarters Assessment (i.e. appraisal of military operations), which suggests routine business. Clearly the neighbors in the surrounding Earle communities would hope for high marks on these kinds of drills, and apparently the participants quoted in this press release fell all over themselves with praise. In our view, the exercise suggests something less than the security self-sufficiency asserted in the kickoff Federal Register announcement of the Laurelwood opening to civilians.

The involvement of the New Jersey State Police raises red flags regarding the eventual role of state law enforcement in all of this and use of NJ taxpayer dollars to police Laurelwood housing on federal property through the year 2040. NAVFAC's Laurelwood EIS portrays law enforcement as NWS Earle's bailiwick (in other words, foot the bill for any additional security detail to patrol the new road, guard the base from intrusion by Laurelwood residents, and handle all police and court matters involving the homes and new 1.7-mile access road), and we can only speculate that in the event that Laurelwood becomes overrun with civilians that the Navy will need to reach out to state and local law enforcement and emergency responders for help once oversight becomes burdensome to the base commander and a distraction to NWS Earle's sole mission - to provide ammunition to the fleet.

The last thing that we as Earle's neighbors need is for unnecessary distractions brought on by civilian housing at Laurelwood to NWS Earle's own security and core mission such as the scenario played out in the recent shooting-and-hostage drill.