New A-Sub Base Means Problems, Prosperity for Rural Town

Just across the tracks from the antebellum charm of historic St. Marys, where old oaks drip Spanish moss, a new nuclear submarine base is changing the face of the countryside with shopping malls and low-cost housing.

The Kings Bay Submarine Base, to be home to Trident submarines, means stability, money and lots of jobs in this area on the southeastern tip of Georgia, just north of Jacksonville, Fla. But the boom is also bringing urban-style headaches to rural Camden County.

The base, under construction for a decade, will add more than 22,000 people to the population of Camden County, which had only about 13,000 in 1980.

School, Crime Problems

Planners are worried about schools, crime, water and sewer systems, libraries, fire protection and recreational facilities.

The county had no movie theater until recently. Now, a six-theater cinema complex has opened in a shopping center and another is probable for a center being built down the road.

The county’s landfill, projected to last up to 40 years, was used up in 10 because of the base-related boom.

From 1980 to 1988, school enrollment in the area increased 54%. Projections show that in 1995 enrollment will be 173% above the 1980 level.

Backers of the base say the Navy is trying hard to be a good neighbor.

Even so, Roger Alderman of the Kings Bay Impact Coordinating Committee said, “The degree that it affects a small area, especially one such as Camden County, is unimaginable.”

First Submarine Due

The first Trident submarine was to arrive at the $1.7-billion base Saturday and be welcomed at an invitation-only ceremony.

Eventually, the base will house 10 Trident subs, each carrying 24 missiles packing eight nuclear warheads per missile. Each warhead is 35 times as powerful as the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.

Each submarine will have more atomic destructive capacity than most nuclear powers; but, if the people of St. Marys are nervous about that, it is subdued. The few protests held at the base have not been locally organized.

Over the centuries--up to now--residents of St. Marys have preserved its charm with a minimum of tackiness.

Area Settled by Spanish

The Spanish settled the community in 1566 and stayed 120 years. Aaron Burr came to town in 1804 after killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel. In the 1930s, cartoonist Roy Crane visited and was so taken by the town streetcar that he used it as a model for his “Toonerville Trolley” cartoon.

Visitors to St. Marys once got the impression that anything destined to happen here happened long ago, but the nearness of the base is changing that.

Crime is up, although local officials blame transient construction workers, not the military, for most of it.

Low-cost housing developments are popping up everywhere. Only about 600 Navy personnel, mostly in the lower ranks, will be housed on the base.

Fields and pine woods have given way to shopping malls, and the mushrooming strip of development along Highway 40 is cheek by jowl with the city limits.

Century-Old Grocery

Tom Sterling, 80, runs the grocery his father founded more than 100 years ago in St. Marys.

“We used to sell everything here, from horse collars on up, or maybe I should say on down,” he said.

Old friends stop by to pass the time and remember when.

But the shelves are thinly stocked these days and customers are few. Malls and shopping centers built for the base trade are drawing shoppers from St. Marys’ few businesses, Sterling said.

In the basement of Orange Hall, a Greek Revival splendor from the 1820s, Elvira Wildes tends a small information center.

The Navy, she said, has gone out of its way to put the base in a positive light, especially to St. Marys’ older residents.

‘They come to tell us the facts,” she said. “They told us it is the only Navy base being started from scratch. They give us tours on the ships, and we eat in the mess hall sometimes.

“If there is dirt and trash going on, and if there are people acting like they shouldn’t, well, I don’t go to those places, so I don’t know about those things.”

There is no entertainment in St. Marys, she observed. “So why would they bother us?”

Seeking to Soften Impact

“It is not an adversarial relationship,” agreed Kenneth Kent, a financial analyst with the coordinating committee, which is trying to soften the impact of the base on the area. “The Navy is trying to be a good neighbor.”

Alderman said that the federally funded committee, made up of local government leaders, “is to lay out the realities of a high-growth area and foresee problems down the road.”

The area has received about $37.5 million in federal impact payments since 1984. Alderman said Washington wants to make 1989 the last year for impact funding.

“We estimate we would need $8.7 million in 1991 and $5.3 million in 1992,” he said. “The Navy isn’t even thinking in terms of 1991 or 1992.”

Kent said that a residential tax base generally is not sufficient to support residential services.

“There is virtually no industrial tax base here and only a nominal commercial base,” he said.

Much of the county is in timber, which is taxed at a low rate and thus provides little county income, he said.

School Taxes High

The county school tax already is 9% above that of other counties in the region, he said, and Camden County cannot absorb even the matching share of the increased cost.

“The current tax situation allows counties to keep up existing schools but not to build new ones required by the increase in population,” Kent said.

“A high percentage of the jobs on the base were to go to the local people, but this has not happened the way it was expected to,” Alderman said.

Because special skills are needed for many jobs, he said, area residents generally have gotten lower-paying jobs in services fields.

“Both the Navy and the region realize the need for a job-training program,” he said.

Alderman said Navy officials at St. Marys are aware of the problems and are trying to get Washington to do more.

“The critical point is at hand,” Alderman said. “We have found out now what has to be done.”