Navy carrier to dock at Jacksonville

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - The U.S. Navy plans to make Mayport Naval Station in Jacksonville the new home of a nuclear aircraft carrier.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, said Monday the move would bring 5,000 sailors, pilots and their families to the Jacksonville area and provide a major boost to north Florida's economy.

"It's a done deal," Nelson said.

The Navy's Pentagon-based information office confirmed Monday that Mayport would be listed as the preferred location for a new nuclear carrier when it releases an environmental impact study on the project on Friday.

In a joint statement, Nelson, U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez and U.S. Rep. Ander Crenshaw said Navy Secretary Donald Winter shared the news with them in a telephone call.

"This is tremendous news for Florida and testament to the strategic importance of Mayport," said Martinez, a Republican.

Work on the carrier and preparing the port for it, including deepening the channel by as much as 15 feet, could take four to five years. Sailors and their families will not be moving to the area for carrier deployments for at least four years, Nelson said.

About $150 million of the $300 million needed to retrofit and repair an older carrier has been appropriated, the rest will be requested in the 2010 defense budget, Nelson said.

"We are looking at some very significant economic impact for the Jacksonville area," he said.

Crenshaw, a Jacksonville Republican, called the announcement a victory for his district's military community.

Mayport was among 13 locations being considered for the new carrier. The Navy chose it over other East Coast bases in an effort to spread out its Atlantic fleet beyond Norfolk, Va., and the mid-Atlantic region, Nelson said.

The Navy hasn't selected a name for the Mayport carrier.

The Kitty Hawk, the last conventionally powered aircraft carrier in the Navy, was decommissioned in May and replaced by the USS George Washington, a nuclear-powered vessel.

The Navy re-established its Fourth Fleet in July and based it at Mayport.

The Fourth Fleet is in charge of directing U.S. naval forces operating in the Caribbean, Central and South America.

The Fourth Fleet was established in World War II and then disbanded at the end of the war.

 

It was not immediately clear what the implications for Norfolk were. A bipartisan group of Virginia congressmen have campaigned against the move.

"That decision seems to be moving a little too rapidly and perhaps we just needed to take a breath and look at one, the huge economic cost of moving a carrier down to Florida," Congressman J. Randy Forbes said last month. "It continues to skyrocket. It seems like every time we get a new assessment, it could be as much as a half billion dollars."

Additional information about plans for homeporting a carrier at Mayport is online at http://www.mayporthomeportingeis.com/ .

The Associated Press contributed to this story.