In Hawthorne, celebration begins

Thursday, Aug. 25, 2005 | 9:22 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Hawthorne residents might want to borrow some of the Army munitions stored around the town and set them off in a pyrotechnic display to celebrate their new lease on life.

"It's celebration time" said Mineral County Commissioner Richard Bryant after the base closure commission rejected the Pentagon's plan to close the Hawthorne Army Depot. "There were celebrations in the workplace and in the streets," Bryant said. "It just shows you what a community team effort can mean when you're dealing with the government.

"It's good to see the system works. They came, they saw, they made their own decisions and determined the Pentagon was wrong in its recommendation,"said Bryant, a lifelong Hawthorne resident, who worked 34 years at the depot.

Closure of the depot that employs approximately 550 workers, according to some records, would have been a devastating blow to the economy in Mineral County.

Members of Nevada's congressional delegation and Gov. Kenny Guinn applauded the decision. Hawthorne "would have suffered a devastating financial blow that would have affected more than half of the local workforce," Guinn said.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said, "Hawthorne Army Depot has unique qualities that are vital to our national security."

"They do work in Hawthorne that can't be done at any other base," he said.

The depot is "the largest, most diverse and most environmentally compliant conventional demilitarization facility in the Department of Defense depot system," Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., a former Air Force pilot, said the lobbying efforts of Hawthorne locals and political leaders were "instrumental" in convincing the commission that the depot had military significance. He said it would have been a strategic mistake to close the depot because of its "significant storage capability, highly skilled workforce, combat terrain training opportunities and modern reprocessing facilities." Lt. Col. John Summers, commander of the Army base, said there were errors made in the Defense Department's decision to close the depot. He said the special commission "made the decisions on the facts."

Bryant called it a team victory in which everybody worked together to save the base. He singled out Reid and Gibbons who, he said, convinced members of the special committee to make two visits, not one, to look at the base.

Bryant and Summers said the decision proved the process worked. When the commission received the facts, it decided against closure.

Bryant said that "probably two-thirds of the jobs in the county would be gone" if the base was closed and the buried weapons were transferred to another location.

"Rural Nevada is poor as it is," he said.

"This would have had a devastating impact on the community," said Hal Holder, who owns the 107-room, pre-World War II-era El Capitan Casino, a Hawthorne landmark. "The depot would have been very difficult to replace. I'm glad they made the right decision."

Guinn said he was "anxiously awaiting the BRAC's decision regarding the fate of eight C-130s based at Reno-Tahoe International airport. He said the loss of those planes would weaken the state's homeland security efforts and disaster preparedness.

Sun reporter Benjamin Grove contributed to this story.