Community input sought on basing F35-C planes
March 20, 2013 | By ALEJANDRO DÃVILA | Staff Writer
IMPERIAL — If there was a unifying message during the Joint Strike Fighter
Coalition meeting Wednesday here, it was that home basing the Navy’s F35C Joint
Strike Fighter Squadron in Imperial County is still an attainable objective.
“It ain’t over until it’s over,” said Lisa Gallinat, co-chairwoman of the coalition,
before she urged the public to attend a public meeting from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. today at
Southwest High School’s multipurpose room.
With this meeting the Navy hopes to educate and gather the public’s input on basing the F-35C Joint Strike Fighter at
NAF El Centro.
NAF El Centro is one of two bases being considered to house these fighter planes.
The coalition says that basing the planes here would bring millions of dollars, create jobs and spark construction
projects and ancillary business activity.
But Naval Air Station Lemoore in Kings County, the other base under review, was listed as the preferred location in
draft environmental impact statement released last month.
Among other things, this DEIS finds that basing the squadron in El Centro could cost some $790 million; while basing
the squadron in NAS Lemoore could cost around $242 million.
This last figure includes improvements at NAS Lemoore, as well as certain renovations at NAF El Centro, where the
squadron would also train.
But coalition members expressed Wednesday that the DEIS figures and findings may not be as accurate as perceived.
“We think that the numbers that they put out there for infrastructure cost are wrong and slanted and inflated for the
problems here at NAF El Centro,” said Marlene Best, coalition member and Imperial city manager.
“They did no analysis of the long-term operational costs. … We think that in a very short number of years they would
make up the additional cost of infrastructure and actually save the taxpayers money over the 30-year life of this
plane,” she said.
In part, saving would come as land for expansion is cheaper here, the coalition maintains, and in addition, bombing
ranges are substantially closer, which would result in fuel savings.
Moreover, Imperial County and its sunny weather would allow maximizing training time while NAS Lemoore has
cloudy weather nearly half of the year, according the coalition.
The coalition is expected to make comments on noise impact and the described impact of low-income children the
DEIS notes — to name a few.
Meanwhile, the Navy is encouraging the public to attend to today’s meetings and comment on the matter.
“No final decision has yet been made, and at this state of the process, again we are soliciting the public’s input. All of
the public comments will be addressed in the Final Environmental Impact Statement, which will be published later on
this year,” said Ted Brown, Environmental Public Affairs Officers for U.S. Fleet Forces Command
Brown noted a decision would come after the final report.
The public input is “absolutely a vital part of the process. … The folks in El Centro and the folks in Lemoore are
obviously very familiar with the areas in which they live, and they can tell us if there is anything that we might have
missed in the document. So yes, we do take the public comments very seriously,” said Brown.
He added that there is no formal presentation today and that instead, the public will have an opportunity to have an
informal discussion with experts who’ll be ready to answer questions on the document and the issue.
“They don’t have to show up at 5, they can show up at any time between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m.,” he said, noting comments
on the DEIS can also be made also online at
The comment period ends April 22.
Staff Writer Alejandro Dávila can be reached at 760-337-3445 or
[email protected]
