[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 82 (Monday, June 20, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H4788]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page H4788]]
                        EXAMINING BRAC CLOSURES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to address the subject of the 
Base Realignment and Closure process that is currently ongoing. I speak 
as a former Air Force pilot and a member of Congress from New Mexico. 
Although the base that I would like to talk about does not lie in my 
district, I think the overall concern that I have is that the process 
of establishing military value has somehow been deeply flawed, at least 
with respect to this one base. I would like to mention a couple of 
things about it.
  According to the criteria set up by the BRAC Commission, encroachment 
was supposed to be one of the important issues that was discussed. In 
other words, if a town grows around a military base, it somehow loses 
its value because there are certain processes that are not as capable 
of being performed. So encroachment, that is the growing of the 
population around the base, is an extremely important measurement as we 
determine military value.
  But as we look at the population, the population is listed on this 
chart in red. In the white areas are low population density areas. 
Cannon Air Force base is right here about 4 or 5 miles from the Texas 
border on the east side of New Mexico. As you can see, there are almost 
no population centers anywhere around. What this means is that Air 
Force fighters can take off from Cannon Air Force base without flying 
over densely populated areas. They can carry live munitions, live 
bombs, and live armament over this sparsely populated area without much 
risk.
  Now this last week we saw the Harrier jet that actually had problems 
and fell into a housing area with those munitions on board, and that is 
the problem with encroachment. And yet when the BRAC Commission says 
that we should not have encroachment and that will be a high priority, 
we see that no encroachment has occurred here. And as we look across 
the rest of the country, we see deep encroachment occurring; and so one 
criteria appears to be completely ignored with respect to Cannon Air 
Force base in the eastern side of New Mexico.
  Another one of the criteria that was mentioned is training space 
unencumbered by the overflight of airlines and commercial traffic. Now, 
again, if people are not aware of the White Sands Missile Range that 
lies in the second district of New Mexico which I do respect, that is a 
completely restricted air space. No airliner ever flies through that 
air space. And so starting back across Dallas, one can see from this 
chart that almost no white exists, white would be the commercial air 
traffic. But those flights begin to divert north toward Albuquerque, or 
they divert south to El Paso and fly completely around New Mexico.
  Now, Cannon Air Force Base again lies about the midpoint in New 
Mexico along the New Mexico-Texas border, and it benefits because those 
airliners have already begun to divert far before they hit the New 
Mexico border, and so the air space that is available for training lies 
in this particular area. And, again, one of the extreme criteria of the 
BRAC Commission appears to have been either ignored or just 
disregarded.
  The problem of training space becomes even more important when it is 
considered with population density. Many times aircraft that take off 
from densely populated areas have to fly to areas of sparse population, 
and each flight in a military aircraft can run tens of thousands of 
dollars. It might be as much as $50,000 an hour to operate. So each 
hour to convey the aircraft simply to the training zone is extremely 
expensive both in dollars and also in the use of the hours on the 
military aircraft, each aircraft having a certain limited life in terms 
of flight hours. So, again, one of the criteria seems to be omitted.
  Another criterion that was judged to be important in evaluating which 
bases to keep open or closed were weather on the training days. Again, 
green indicates the days of cloudy weather. The white areas are 
generally clear skies. I can tell you, having flown in New Mexico most 
of my life, approximately 320 days a year are available for flight 
training in New Mexico, and it is significantly less. The next chart I 
show is simply a followup on that, and it shows precipitation. Again, 
one can see that the area around Cannon Air Force Base simply does not 
have the problem of precipitation.
  Again, precipitation is two problems. It is a problem of flying in 
bad and inclement weather, and it is also the problem of corrosion, and 
we do not have the problem on or in New Mexico. Again, it is a very 
significant thing.
  The final chart, Mr. Speaker, wraps it all up. New Mexico has the 
best, most accessible training space, the least encroachment, and the 
least overflight of commercial traffic. We are not able to understand 
exactly how the BRAC Commission came up with its report. And we would 
urge the House to take a stand to see that military value is considered 
as we approach the approval of the BRAC process.

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