Defense Communities 360 Headlines

Fredericksburg, Va.-based Marstel-Day last week was awarded the 2012 Outstanding Federal Planning Program Award from the American Planning Association for its support of the Air Force’s encroachment management program. The environmental, land use and conservation consulting firm developed the Installation Complex Encroachment Management Action Plan (ICEMAP) concept to comprehensively address encroachment issues for Air Force installations, associated military training routes and remote training ranges. The ICEMAP process includes land use planning and conservation strategies that seek to maintain military-compatible and ecologically-valuable land uses on a regional scale …

King George County, Va., seeks proposals from qualified consultants with significant experience in preparing joint land use studies (JLUS) to conduct a JLUS for King George County, Naval Support Facility Dahlgren, and the surrounding communities. Interested parties may obtain the RFP package by contacting the county’s procurement manager, Kelly S. Dixon CPPO CPPB, at 540/775-1657 or kdixon@co.kinggeorge.state.va.us …

Legislation to create a statewide task force to prepare Montana for a future BRAC round was struck down last week in the state Senate despite apparent support. The bill, which would have created a military strategic and economic impact task force, passed the House last month. A Senate committee held a hearing on the measure, but Democratic leadership in the legislature ultimately tabled it, reported the Great Falls Tribune …

New Mexico’s two Democrat senators and one Republican senator from Texas last week introduced legislation to transfer several large parcels of land between the Army and the Bureau of Land Management to provide buffers around White Sands Missile Range and Fort Bliss. The moves called for in the legislation were the result of an agreement reached between the Army and BLM …

DOD expects to incur more than $24 million in costs at two installations shuttered during the 2005 round of base closures to unwind renewable energy and privatized utility projects affected by the closures, according to a new Government Accountability Office study. At Fort Monmouth, N.J., the Army paid about $24.3 million to terminate a renewable energy contract involving ground source heat pumps and to install several boilers to replace the heat pumps. The Army also terminated a privatized electrical utility contract at Fort Monroe, Va., but has not yet reached a settlement with the utility over the termination …

Lawmakers offered several novel arguments against granting DOD’s request for a new BRAC round in 2015 while questioning top Pentagon officials during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, but ultimately all the members of the panel who addressed the issue voiced reasons to oppose additional base closures. There’s got to be a better way to close installations than the BRAC process, which upsets communities as soon as a new round is authorized, said Sen. Tim Kaine. “When BRAC is announced, what happens is that every community that has military assets, whether they’re ultimately going to be on the chopping block or not, they lawyer-up, they accountant-up, they public relations-up …

Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter signed a measure earlier this month making Idaho the 45th state to adopt an interstate agreement designed to smooth the transition for military children transferring to a new school district. “We thank Gov. Otter for signing the interstate compact,” said Kathleen Berg, chair of the Military Interstate Children’s Compact Commission. “This was truly one of the fastest moving pieces of legislation for the commission …

A plan to convert the former Fort Gillem, Ga., into a logistics hub serving Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and the Port of Savannah could be jeopardized unless state officials’ concerns about contamination from the post that has seeped into neighboring Forest Park are mollified. Earlier this year, the state asked the Environmental Protection Agency to consider making the installation a Superfund site, an action that would severely hamper the community’s reuse plan from going forward …

The Air Force Civil Engineer Center recently has completed a year-long effort to reconcile a 1.5 million-acre discrepancy between Air Force and Bureau of Land Management records over what parcels being used by the service are considered withdrawn public lands. Withdrawn lands, which are managed as part of the public domain by BLM, are tracts that have been withdrawn from the operation of public land laws for military use …

Officials still are evaluating whether to furlough more than 700,000 civilian employees as a way to trim defense spending over the last half of the year, Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale said on Thursday. “Secretary Hagel has asked that we take another close look at furloughs, and we are in the process of doing that …