Navy Base Changeover Fires Up Outgoing Leader

In a dramatic departure from the typical military farewell, the outgoing commander of the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Port Hueneme on Wednesday tore into local environmentalists during the base’s change-of-command ceremony.

Capt. James “Stretch” Phillips, who later acknowledged that his comments were directed primarily at the Oxnard-based Beacon Foundation, said the military was “under attack every day” by “selfish people.”

The media “usually calls them environmental watchdogs,” Phillips said. “But the watchdog only watches its own backyard and doesn’t care about what’s going on across the street and around the world.”

He suggested that attempts to stop defense testing and training were harmful to American soldiers and sailors.

In his speech, Phillips criticized the rush to clean up methyl tertiary butyl ether at Port Hueneme as well as opposition to an Ojai weather tower and to bomb testing in Puerto Rico.

After the ceremony, Phillips said his frustration centered mostly on the Beacon group’s complaints over the years on operations at the Surface Warfare Center’s radar-testing facility.

Last year, the Navy chose to move ahead with an expansion of the facility, ignoring a ruling by the state Coastal Commission that a civilian expert be included on the Navy’s panel to monitor health issues.

Facility officials contend that they have complied with all state and federal laws and that the commission was requiring too much.

In January, the Navy released an internal study calling the facility safe. In explaining his comments after the ceremony, Phillips said, “I want to make sure we’re allowed to get our point across. I think we were right and they were wrong” about the expansion.

Lee Quaintance, a director of the Beacon Foundation who lives at nearby Silver Strand Beach, said his organization has made another complaint to the Coastal Commission, which will hear the issue in August.

His group maintains that the Navy hasn’t lived up to an agreement made last year.

“I don’t think any institution should think it’s inappropriate or unpatriotic to be expected to comply with the law,” he said.

However, he said he has never had an adversarial relationship with Phillips.

“I didn’t expect he would run up and throw his arms around me, but he has always behaved in a professional and appropriate manner,” Quaintance said after hearing about Phillips’ speech. “It’s been professional and refreshingly free of name-calling on both sides. I hope this doesn’t signal a change.”

Phillips, who has headed the Surface Warfare Center for three years and helped design the Tomahawk missile, is leaving Ventura County for the Pentagon, where he will head the Navy’s land attack warfare branch.

His replacement, Capt. Alan Maiorano, took over the Surface Warfare Center during the ceremony.

He comes to the command from the Cruiser Conversion Program in Washington, D.C.

Maiorano praised Phillips’ performance as commanding officer and said he didn’t have a feel yet for community issues.

But part of his job will be to show the community what the base is doing, he said.

“Seen rightly, we are a good steward,” he said. Part of the job “is to continue to reinforce that your perception is perhaps not quite reality.”

During a ceremony that merged 200 years of naval tradition and a string of good-natured jokes about Phillips’ 6-foot, 7-inch height, county Supervisor Frank Schillo presented the departing commanding officer with a resolution commending him for surviving life “under fire from outside the fence.”

The speech “fits Stretch to a T,” said Ron Kaufman of the Oxnard Chamber of Commerce. “He has such a great love for the Navy. He takes the job with such passion.”