Gen. Powell Urges Taking 2 S. California Facilities Off ‘Hit List’ : Defense cuts: The top U.S. officer opposes closing the Long Beach Naval Shipyard and realigning the San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot.

The nation’s top military officer has opposed a proposal by a federal commission that would close the Long Beach Naval Shipyard and realign the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego.

Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has told Deputy Defense Secretary Donald J. Atwood that the two installations are too important militarily to be included on the commission’s “hit list” of bases targeted for closure or realignment.

In a letter dated last Friday, Atwood in turn urged the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission not to follow through with its preliminary plans for the two facilities.

The two Southern California facilities were among 13 military installations the commission proposed for closure or realignment earlier this month. They would be added to a list of 31 major facilities the Pentagon has proposed closing. On Powell’s recommendations, Atwood urged that four of the 13 installations on the commission’s list be spared.

The commission begins its final round of deliberations Thursday.

In a June 20 memo to Atwood, Powell said the closure of the Long Beach shipyard “would seriously degrade dry-dock capability for all large ships in the Southern California area.” Powell added that alternative shipyards in Hawaii and Washington state “simply would not provide the services found at Long Beach.”

In listing it for closure, the commission contended that with fewer ships being built, repaired and overhauled in United States, there is a nationwide excess of shipyards.

The commission also cited a longstanding criticism of the Long Beach facility--that it is not equipped and approved to work on the Navy’s nuclear-powered ships.

The support for the base expressed by Powell and Atwood heartened officials who have been lobbying on its behalf.

“This basically confirms that the points we’ve been making have been more than just political rhetoric,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Long Beach), one of the shipyard’s most ardent defenders.

Powell and Atwood, he added, “are not concerned about politics in my congressional district but about the security of the United States. And they’ve weighed in heavily in favor of Long Beach.”

Louis Rodriguez, president of one of the shipyard’s labor unions, said that the recommendations by Powell and Atwood had “everybody . . . dancing in the streets. Finally, we have been recognized for who we are, what we are and what we have accomplished around here.”

The Long Beach Naval Shipyard, the city’s second-largest employer, provides about 4,100 jobs and pumps about $300 million annually into the local economy.

In arguing against the realignment of the San Diego Marine facility in his memo to Atwood, Powell warned that such a move would cause the Corps to lose its capacity for “rapid expansion of recruit training during mobilization.”

The San Diego facility, where 20,000 Marine recruits per year endure the rigors of boot camp, is one of only two such Marine installations nationwide and handles more than half of all the Corps’ recruits. The other boot camp is at Parris Island, S.C. An alternative training site at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County “could not duplicate the capacity of the San Diego facility” if an international crisis demanded a sudden growth of the Marine Corps, Powell wrote.

The commission’s proposal would result in a significant cutback in the base’s personnel.

Atwood and Powell did not argue against the commission’s recommended closure of the San Diego Naval Training Center at Point Loma, where last year 28% of the Navy’s enlistees--almost 21,000 men and women--underwent eight weeks of boot camp.

While heartened by Powell’s efforts to save the Marine facility in San Diego, Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham said he is optimistic that both the Marine and Naval facilities will be spared.

“Both bases are tied together . . . to keep the MCRD open and close the (San Diego) NTC would be foolhardy,” said Cunningham.

Meanwhile, San Diego Chamber of Commerce President Lee Grissom predicted that Powell’s letter would be enough to save the Marine facility from the budgetary ax. Powell’s recommendation “offers us more than optimism,” he said. “I’m not aware of any other instance where Gen. Powell has intervened before on these base closings. This bodes well for us.”

The two other bases that Atwood, again acting on Powell’s recommendations, urged the commission to remove from its initial hit list were MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla. and the Plattsburgh, N.Y., Air Force Base.