About 70 people turned out Thursday night
to listen to the US Air Force discuss its plans for increasing training
activities in the Tate’s Hell State Forest.
The
Air Force is just beginning the process of creating an Environmental Impact
Study on what they call the Gulf regional Airspace Strategic Initiative or
GRASI for short.
Air
Force officials said the initiative would allow them to expand non-hazardous
training to areas further away from Eglin Air Force base into parts of the
Blackwater River State Forest and Tate’s hell.
They
say the expansion is needed because scheduling non-hazardous training on the
base is getting to be more difficult as hazardous training liking bomb and
laser training is becoming more active.
Under
the current plans the air force training would require placing about a dozen
threat emitters around the area for training aircraft.
It
would also require using various sites for helicopter landing and drop zones,
airstrips, and ground force exercises.
The
Air Force said Tate’s Hell would be used minimally because of its distance from
Eglin.
The
public was allowed to comment on the plan and most of the people who spoke up
were opposed to the proposal.
Concerns
were raised about the potential for the military to expand its mission once it
has a foothold.
There
were also concerns raised about the potential impacts to hunting, animal
species that live in the forest and on local tourism.
Noise,
pollution, and impacts on public access to the property were also raised.
The
Air Force did not answer questions last night; they were collecting information
to address in the Environmental Impact statement, the draft version of which
should be complete late this year.
Public
comments will still be accepted through September the 12th.
We
have posted the e-mail to make public comments on this story at oysterradio.com
and on the oyster radio facebook page.
You
can make comments by e-mail to mike.spaits@eglin.af.mil
http://www.oysterradio.com e-mail manager@oysterradio.com with comments http://live.oysterradio.com/
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