Proposed Supersonic Testing Ground Debated : Nevadans Sound Off on Navy’s Plan

It was dawn and the temperature was a chilling 5 degrees below zero in this remote, snow-shrouded central Nevada valley as school bus driver Tharon Turley picked up her first two passengers for the 81-mile trip to Fallon. Turley, 65, has lived her entire life in the sparsely populated, 110-mile-long, 10-mile-wide valley.

“I love this place because it is so far away from everything,” she said. “I never want to leave. But I don’t see how my husband and I will be able to keep our sanity blasted by 27 sonic booms a day.”

What has Turley and other residents of this remote valley worried are plans by the U.S. Navy to use the area as focal point for a new 5,500-square mile supersonic testing ground. Under the proposal, 41 to 136 low-level flights by F-18 Hornets and other high-performance fighters flying out of Fallon Naval Air Station at speeds up to Mach 1.2 would bombard Dixie Valley with at least 27 sonic booms a day.

The Navy, which sponsored an environmental impact report on the plan completed last month, is still in the process of reviewing the proposal. Sonic booms are not new to the 60 or so full-time residents of Dixie Valley. For years, they have been shaken by intermittent sonic booms from low-flying jets en route to bombing ranges a few miles to the south.

Despite that--and despite indications that the Navy may be prepared to buy out affected residents--the new plan has locals shaking their fists at the sky. One rancher planted a tombstone in his front yard with the epitaph: “Here lies Dick C. Valley, died of a sonic boom.” He piled up a mound of dirt behind the tombstone with a pair of boots sticking out at the end of the mound.

“Two years ago one of the jets buzzed my school bus,” Turley recalled as the first rays of a new day blazed brilliantly across the horizon of seemingly never-ending snow. “It flew very low right at us. There were eight kids on the bus. I was shaking with anger, not fear. That pilot knew what he was doing.”

Navy spokesmen acknowledge that sonic booms can cause problems for residents, but note that they have to conduct test flights somewhere. Moreover, the Navy is not without friends and supporters in central Nevada.

“The Navy is not out to roll over anybody; if people affected by the supersonic operations have legitimate requirements, they will be met,” said Capt. Paul Austin, 48, commanding officer of Fallon Naval Air Station. “Fallon is a national asset, essential to training air wings before deployment. This happens to be the best place in the United States to conduct this type of activity. . . . We need to go through the speed of sound to train our pilots to fly what it would be like in the real world. As it is now, we are teaching them to lose because of restrictions on flying.

“We have met with the people in Dixie Valley, in Fallon and throughout central Nevada many times over the past 2 1/2 years explaining our intentions. . . . We are accepting written comments on the proposal through Jan. 24. Then it goes up for review and is sent to the secretary of the Navy for final decision.”

The 60 year-round residents of Dixie Valley live on 8,000 acres of deeded land in scattered ranches. They are here because they like the quiet, remote life.

“The quality of life in areas underlying the supersonic testing could decline due to annoyance and startle effects related to sonic booms,” acknowledges the Navy in its recently released draft environmental impact statement. “Sonic booms could have adverse effects on human health, including effects on the autonomic nervous system (regulates involuntary action of the intestines, heart and glands),” the report admits. “Other health-related effects that could occur include sleep disturbance, irritability or nervousness.”

The report says that property damage, especially broken windows, could be expected. As a mitigating measure, the Navy could “purchase private residential property that would be adversely affected or compensate property owners for loss in value incurred,” according to the report. It also suggests that relocation assistance could be provided to residents who choose to move and that the Navy could pay for upgrading houses to meet “certain minimum standards for sound protection.”

The environmental impact statement, commissioned by the Navy and prepared by Woodward-Clyde Consultants, a Walnut Creek, Calif., firm, concludes, after examination of possible sites throughout the West, that the central Nevada airspace is the only suitable place in America for the testing.

“We have been in limbo out here ever since the Navy first proposed supersonic flights three years ago,” lamented Dixie Valley resident Bruce Polk, 49. “Banks won’t give us loans for improving our property. No one would buy our property even if any of us wanted to sell, not with the threat of supersonic flights over Dixie Valley. “Nearly all the men in the valley served time in the military. We’re not anti-Navy. We’re very pro-America, flag-waver types. But we want our country to protect us, not to destroy us,” Polk said.

Polk was one of 14 Dixie Valley residents who gathered around the woodstove in Ruth and Ed Robbins ranch house to discuss the Navy’s plans with a reporter. All said they did not want to sell out to the Navy and move elsewhere.

“The federal government owns 87% of the state of Nevada as it is. There is a lot of empty space here. Why us?” asked Gene McCann, 66.

The proposed supersonic flights are controversial throughout central Nevada. Dick Holmes, 56, a private pilot and until recently owner of a Fallon television repair business, is chairman of the 250-member Concerned Rural Nevadans, a group made up a coalition of cattlemen, miners, environmentalists, Indians, rural and urban dwellers.

“Sonic booms will be rocking the entire mid-part of the state when the Navy unleashes its supersonic war games over our skies,” Holmes. said. “The idea is outrageous, exposing human beings to continuous sonic bombardment.”

A leading opponent of the supersonic test is Dr. Richard Bargen, 37, a Fallon physician who operates a flying doctor’s service to isolated communities in the state. Bargen’s pilot license was recently suspended when he was accused of deliberately flying within 500 feet of a Navy radar site in a restricted airspace. He attributes the suspension of his license to Navy harassment.

“As a physician I am worried about the significant impact sonic booms will have on the physical and mental health of Nevadans. Humans have never been subjected to anything like this before. It is totally unacceptable. The Navy plans to make guinea pigs of those unfortunate enough to live under the supersonic flights.”

Bargen filed an unsuccessful suit aimed at preventing the supersonic flights over the state. He gathered a series of affidavits from Nevadans citing adverse effects in the past from sonic booms. But the Navy also has friends in Fallon and elsewhere in central Nevada.

“Right now the Navy injects $40 million a year into the economy of Churchill County,” said Gregg MacNeil, 65, spokesman for the Fallon Chamber of Commerce. “That is 40% of our total economy. This place would be a disaster without the Navy. With the proposed new supersonic operations area and strike warfare center, the Navy plans to spend $150 million here in the next five years in new structures and installations.

“What the Navy is doing is valuable and important for America. What are you going to do, send them to some other country to train?” MacNeil and others in favor of the supersonic operations over central Nevada believe the Navy will conduct its faster-than-sound flights over uninhabited areas.

“There will have to be compromises. Maybe a handful of people in remote isolated areas affected by sonic booms such as Dixie Valley will have to move. I’m sure if that happens the Navy will compensate them in a fair manner,” MacNeil insisted.

“I don’t want to see 40% of our economy pull out of this community. I don’t think the majority who live here want to see it leave,” said Joseph O. Sevigny, 50, president of Fallon National Bank. “I don’t have any problems with sonic booms. I was raised in Detroit. I understand what pollution can be. It has not occurred here in my judgment. I don’t believe it will.”

Capt. Austin insists that the Navy has been “above-board on everything in this matter, seeking arguments pro and con. I don’t think people need to be alarmed about it.”

At Frenchmen, at the south end of Dixie Valley and three miles north of the military bombing range, Chris Chealander, 31, and his wife, Laurie, own and operate Frenchmen’s Station Cafe, bar, four-room motel and two pump-filling station on Highway 50, 35 miles east of Fallon. They sell hats and T-shirts with a drawing of a Navy fighter flying by the cafe between the ground and the building’s roof with the inscription: “I got bombed at Frenchmen.”

“We sell an awful lot of the hats and T-shirts to Navy people, but not to pilots. They don’t think it’s funny,” Laurie Chealander said.