As Navy targets Gates County for OLF, residents raise concerns

AT THEIR FAMILY farm in the Gates County Sandbanks area, Elaine Herring and her sister Linda Warren, both wearing sweat shirts with "No OLF" on them, walked along a ditch bank thick with willow trees.

Warren stopped at one tree and bent a tiny bare limb over for a closer look. Attached by a piece of silk was a tightly curled leaf she recognized as the winter shelter of a viceroy butterfly caterpillar.

The sisters have planted more than 6,000 cedar trees for winter bird cover, berry trees for wildlife and willow trees for butterflies.

"The people in Raleigh looked at a map and said, 'Let's go here,' " she said. "They don't really know what's here."

Residents of the Sandbanks area are looking for whatever will best defeat the Navy's proposal to build a jet practice airfield near their homes, whether it be butterflies or barbecue.

There is no wildlife refuge close by that attracts thousands of waterfowl - as there is in Washington County, which the Navy abandoned as its preferred site. There is no population center like Moyock, near the Camden County site also proposed for the airfield. There is a state game land in the area.

"We don't have a lot of leverage to fight with," said Ricky Hedgepeth, who with his wife, Paige, owns and operates Tarheel Bar-B-Q. "We've got to grab onto anything we can."

Herring, Warren and their brother Danny Byrum all live within a half-mile of one another on a 175-acre farm bought in the 1940s by their grandfather. Herring and Byrum live on Byrum Road, named for their family.

Mable Boone lives just down Byrum Road from Herring.

"I haven't prepared to move," said Boone, who has lived there since 1963. "I don't know where to go. I've got to uproot. No. Uh-uh. No. No. I don't want it."

Boone's son lives next door. Her husband's sister-in-law is on the other side, and just beyond that is a niece.

"It's not just a bunch of random people here," Herring said. "Everything is family."

The homemade barbecue from Tarheel Bar-B-Q on U.S. 13 in Gates County has a reputation as some of the best around. Not long ago, a truck driver from Texas stopped in for barbecue. He had heard on his CB radio how good it was.

"What are we going to do?" Paige Hedgepeth said. "This is our livelihood. My dad started this business when I was 2 years old."

The Navy announced late last month that the Sandbanks site in Gates County, another in Camden County and three in Virginia would be studied over the next 30 months to see which one would be most suitable for an outlying landing field.

In September, the state and Navy surprised locals by naming several sites in North Carolina and Virginia, including sites in Gates and Camden counties, as possible OLF sites.

Gates County residents organized a group opposing the OLF, established a Web site, held meetings and distributed "No OLF" signs.

At a meeting held in Raleigh in November, a video set to music was played to Navy and state officials showing scenes of Gates County farmland, swampland, barns, churches and children holding hands. Many in attendance came to tears.

"I feel like the Navy is going to do what it wants to anyway, no matter how much we fight," Ricky Hedgepeth said. "But I'm not going to stop fighting."

Jeff Hampton, (252) 338-0159, jeff.hampton@pilotonline.com