New Mexico’s Cannon Air Force Base won’t
be shut down — at least not for the next few years (HCN,
8/22/05: Leavin’ on a Jet Plane). It and four other Western
military installations narrowly escaped the base-closure ax.
The nine-member federal Base Realignment and Closure
(BRAC) Commission finished its hearings on Aug. 26, voting against
the Pentagon’s recommendation to completely close Cannon,
near Clovis. Instead, Cannon’s F-16 fighters will move to
other bases, but the base will stay open for five more years in
what is called “enclave status.” If the Department of Defense
hasn’t found a new mission for it by then, the base will be
shuttered.
The partial reprieve “means eastern New Mexico
stays alive … until 2010, at the very least,” said Gov. Bill
Richardson on C-SPAN.
In another surprise move, the BRAC
commission voted to keep South Dakota’s Ellsworth Air Force
Base open. Hawthorne Army Depot in northern Nevada also escaped the
recommended shutdown, and the BRAC commissioners voted to keep
Nevada’s 192nd Airlift Squadron in Reno.
Utah’s Deseret Chemical Depot near Tooele will also remain
open for now. The Army will determine whether the depot can be used
to incinerate conventional weapons; if it can’t, the facility
will be closed.
The BRAC panel recently sent its final
decisions to President Bush, who has until Sept. 23 to accept or
reject the entire list. It then goes to Congress for approval. For
more on the BRAC decisions, go to www.defenselink.mil/brac.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Western military bases still reporting for duty.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
