To the Editor:

Oceana and Fentress were rural properties until the military, the mayor of Virginia Beach and the Virginia Beach City Council allowed the encroachment that created the problem in the first place.

Building the OLF does not solve the encroachment problem as these planes still take off and come back to Oceana to land.

The fix is to force Virginia Beach, which receives the money from this base and which created this problem, to tear down the development that is causing the problem.

Why is it OK to condemn rural property in our area and not do the same thing in Virginia Beach, which created the problem? The most cost-effective thing is to move the master jet base elsewhere where they have more space to a neighborhood that wants it, not to some place the governor arbitrarily picks for political expediency.

Lemoore, the Navy’s master jet base in California, is 324 miles from the fleet in San Diego.

My position is that the Navy and the governor and politicians in Virginia have not really done a valid and extensive check for possible OLF locations yet. It would appear due to politics that the intent was to keep the master jet base in Virginia Beach and export the noise to someone else rather than find a more suitable location for the whole master jet base, which is the only solution that makes any sense from a military and common-sense standpoint.

Let’s fix the root cause of the problem, not the symptom, as politicians are prone to do.

Mike Eggleston

Surry County