After almost 2 years, Harrisburg as finally relented and is withdrawing its plans to overdevelop the Willow Grove Naval Air Station and to permit civilian air traffic in order to fund the runway.
When Harrisburg inserted itself into this process it stripped the local community of the local input and control that has always defined the process when the military vacates an installation. From the beginning I have been calling for local control of the future of Willow Grove.
Hopefully, we can now begin the process of discussing the future of the Willow Grove Naval Air Station - a future that is ours to create!
Governor Rendell annouced he is withdrawing his plans for the Willow Grove Naval Air Station. His plans previously included 57 new buildings and 12 new hangars and relied on commercial air traffic to fund the runway at Willow Grove. From the beginning Harrisburg needed to allow civilian air traffic in order to pay to keep the runway operating - and they’ve finally acknowledged that! After wasting years of our time and millions of our taxpayer dollars, Rendell has come to realize we we’re not going to let him destroy our town without a fight and has abandoned his efforts.
From the day he announced these plans I’ve worked tirelessly to restore local decision-making to the process rather than having Harrisburg bureaucrats decide what would happen to the 1000 acres of land in Horsham Township.
Together we’ve worked to protect our quality of life in Horsham but while that chapter of this book has ended, another is just beginning. As I’ve been saying for almost two years, the local community should decide what will come to be of the Willow Grove Naval Air Station when the military vacates it.
Thanks so much for standing with me as we work to protect the community we love.
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Click here to see the Governor’s Press Release…
A month ago Senator Greenleaf’s community protecting legislation was passed by the PA Senate and was sent to the PA House Veterans Affairs and Emergency Preparedness Committee for action. According to the State Senate’s website, despite the fact that local State Rep. Rick Taylor sits on that committee no action has been taken on Senator Greenleaf’s legislastion.
Instead, the PA House Transportation Committee has scheduled a hearing for Thursday, May 28th at 10:00 A.M. at the Horsham Community Center at 1025 Horsham Road (behind the Township building and pollice station) on Taylor’s legislation. I urge everyone to attend and support this legislation as long as its amended to close the loophole I referenced in earlier posts.
You might be saying, “Great, we finally have some legislation moving.”
However, when you consider that Taylor’s legislation needs to be voted out of committee and then voted on by the full PA House and then go over to the Senate for consideration in a committee there and then by the full Senate you should be asking yourself, “Why didn’t Rep. Taylor get a hearing scheduled on Greenleaf’s legislation which has already been through the committee and the full PA Senate and would go directly to the Governor once the House passes it?”
Let’s hope Rep. Taylor is not more concerned about having his name attached to the bill than moving the bill that would get to the Governor’s desk the fastest. Its been over a year since we began fighting for legislation to protect us from non-military flights and over-development and we want action.
Senator Greenleaf has really stepped up to the plate here. In just a few short months he introduced legislation to help protect us from non-military air traffic and over-development at Willow Grove, got it passed out of committee and then was able to get the full Senate’s approval by a large margin.
“Keeping future commercial flights out of Willow Grove airspace was supported overwhelmingly by the state Senate on Monday, which gave Sen. Stewart Greenleaf’s Senate Bill 48 its blessing.”
The big question that remains…will Rep. Taylor amend his legislation to match Sen. Greenleaf’s and will Rep. Taylor work to get it passed out of committee in the House then through the full House as Sen. Greenleaf did? Lastly will he work to convince the Governor to sign the legislation?
At this point the legislation hasn’t even been brought up for a vote in committee let alone the full House. I don’t know what’s causing the delay but let’s hope he gets the ball rolling soon.
The full article is here…
Base Bill Bars Commercial Flights
Sorry I’ve been away from the blog for a little while but work and my wedding were keeping me busy. In the meantime I tracked down both the Senate and House Bills proposed by our local legislators and here they are…
SB-48
HB-111
As you can see, the Senate Bill was introduced January 20, 2009 and contains language to prevent commercial air traffic at the base. It was assigned to the Veteran’s Affairs and Emergency Preparedness Committee in the Senate.
The House Bill was introduced February 24, 2009 and assigned to the Transportation Committee. It has the identical language as the Senate Bill to restrict commericial air traffic BUT has the following language added at the beginning…
In the event the Commonwealth or any instrumentality thereof owns, leases or exercises jurisdiction and operational control of the airport at the installation to be established on property known as the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base (NASJRB) Willow Grove, in Horsham Township, Montgomery County, the property shall be used by the Pennsylvania National Guard, Department of Defense components, Federal, State and local government agencies and associated users to perform national defense, homeland security and emergency preparedness missions.
There is also this language included…
The Commonwealth may not permit use of airfield property under its jurisdiction and operational control at the installation for regularly scheduled commercial passenger operations, regularly scheduled cargo operations, for routine reliever airport operations or other nongovernmental aviation operations not performing national defense, homeland security and emergency preparedness missions of the installation.
As you can plainly see this means the restictions on commercial air traffic would only apply if the Commonwealth owned the land and it remains under the Commonwealth’s “jurisdiction and operational control”. In other words, if Rendell transferred the land to some other entity to run the facility, public or private, these restrictions would not apply. One can only wonder why this language was added - I mean the rest of the bill is virtually identical to the Senate Bill so someone thought it was important enought to add this language rather than simply propose a bill restiricting commercial air traffic regardless of who controls the land as the Senate Bill does.
To sum it up, the Senate Bill is clearly the better choice of the 2 bills since it limits commercial air traffic regardless of who owns the land. The House Bill leaves too much of a loophole as its written.
Its important to note, these are just pieces of paper with absolutley no value unless they are enacted. While the Senate Bill is a great first step, there is much work to be done before we are truly protected from commercial air traffic at Willow Grove.
The Intel reports that Rep. Taylor is preparing legislation to address the problems we’ve been discussing since the state first unveiled its plan. Unfortunately the legislation has not been prepared yet so I have not been able to compare it to the proposed legislation Horsham Council submitted last summer to see if it does truly address all our concerns. As I said with Senator Greenleaf’s legislation, we’ll have to wait and see the actual language before commenting further. There have been too many past claims from officials at the state and federal level that have not panned out - remember we heard claims all last year from elected officals that they passed legislation protecting us from non-military air traffic. Well, if that were the case they wouldn’t need to write this additional legislation, would they?
Interestingly, I spoke with Rep. Murt on Friday morning and he said he had not had any contact with Rep. Taylor about this new legislation. Rep. Murt did say that if the legislation Rep. Taylor presents is not what Horsham requested he would offer his own legislation along those lines or seek to have Rep. Taylor’s amended to reflect the language we need.
Let’s hope the legislation Sen. Greenleaf, Rep. Taylor and Rep. Murt present is exactly what Horsham Council is seeking to protect our quality of life.
One bothersome quote from the article comes from Don Carmeans. I like Don, I’ve met him many times and although we differ on policy he’s a nice guy who has his marching orders. However, his statement,
“We are willing to let Horsham (officials) have a voice in the development process. But we won’t give them a voice in the operation of the base; that’s not going to happen. The military mission is a little outside the scope of their job description.“
is very misleading. Nobody has ever suggested that Horsham officials should be involved in decisions surrounding the military mission at Willow Grove. Since there will be no military planes and no military flying mission for Willow Grove, the runway is not a part of the military mission.
Horsham Council wants input into which non-military entities are going to build facilities at the base and which non-military entites are going to be flying in and out of the base. No Council member has ever suggested they should have a say in any military operations.
To be fair, I don’t know if Don’s comment was inadvertently taken out of context for the article or not but the way it reads, the quote suggests something that is just not accurate.
The entire article is here…
Possible State House Legislation in the Works
Here is the letter to the editor I sent to the Intel introducing this blog. The traffic to the site jumped up instantly so thanks to all who visited!
Effort to protect horsham goes on - Intelligencer - January 8, 2009
According to his website, State Senator Stewart Greenleaf has stepped up and introduced legislation “aimed” at preventing civilian air traffic out of Willow Grove. While politicians at the state and federal level have previously stated they introduced legislation preventing certain types of air traffic, the legislation was always riddled with loopholes allowing any of the state’s tenants at the Willow Grove Naval Station to use the runway for any purpose.
I haven’t reviewed Sen. Greenleaf’s legislation yet but several quotes from the press release indicate this bill may be what we in Horsham have been seeking. For example, the press release title includes, “Greenleaf strengthens proposal to prevent commercial flights…” All previous pieces of legislation discussed only a very narrowly defined “commercial” air traffic. I don’t know about you but my concern is for ALL non-military, in other words - civilian, air traffic.
Another quote from the press release exhibiting some of our progress is, “The bill…provides that non-governmental associated users be limited to the overall mission of homeland security and compy with local regulations.” By limiting the use of the runway to homeland security purposes we allow Horsham to continue the proud tradition of doing our small part to assist in our nation’s security and defense without subjecting us to civilian air traffic at all hours of the day and night for other purposes - whether they are commercial, recreational, or otherwise.
I’ll be reviewing the legislation and comparing it with the language Horsham Council requested of the Legislature and Governor last summer but on its face it seems to take us in the right direction. Of course, introducing legislation is easy but a piece of legislation doesn’t do anything to protect us until its passed by the Senate and House and signed by the Governor. For the time being though, it appears as though Senator Greenleaf has stepped up to get the ball rollling.
Read the entire press release here…
http://senatorgreenleaf.com/press-2008/121108.htm
What’s most interesting is that despite its $300,000 price tag, the state has consistently denounced the Kimball Report as just a concept and not a plan for action. However, the Kimball Report is very specific in calling for “rapid and robust development” of the “Southwest Area” (along Horsham Road) of the base to create a revenue stream for the facility.
Volume 2 - Business Plan (p. 15)
4.1.3 New Development Revenue Sources
The southwest development area occupies approximately 130 acres and is relatively undeveloped. This area is very well suited for new construction of mission-related activities that would need newer multipurpose facilities and could be developed immediately.
Just one more step the state is taking that mirrors those detailed in the Kimball Report.
You can view Volume 2 (Business Plan) of the Kimball Report here…
Kimball Report - Volume 2 - Business Plan
During their October meeting, Horsham Council announced that state officials were in discussions with Teva Pharmaceutical Company (”among the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies” with worldwide distribution according to Teva’s website) to locate at the base. Specifically, Teva is interested in ALL the land along Horsham Road from Privet Road to Maple Avenue and, according to Teva, has NO Homeland Security Mission.
TEVA, a pharmaceutical manufacturer, is accepting engineering proposals for the construction of one million square foot warehouse and 500,000 square feet of office space along the Horsham Road side of the base. The state anticipates construction and leasing of space prior to 2011. TEVA currently utilizes the Newark and Philadelphia airport for transport of pharmaceuticals and has indicated a possible advantage to moving to the base would be the use of the runway. They reported that they were not aware of what their relationship is in conjunction with the Homeland Security mission. It is expected that they will utilize Route 611 for their truck traffic.
See the Horsham Council Meeting Minutes here…
Horsham Council October 27, 2008 Meeting Minutes
