Locals ready for a fight over Hangar One Locals ready for a fight over Hangar One (July 29, 2005)

By Jon Wiener

The battle for Hangar One may be just beginning.

Two weeks after a public meeting turned ugly when Navy officials announced plans to demolish the building or strip its siding, a group calling itself Save Hangar One met to discuss strategies for reusing the historic landmark. Those present -- a collection of 25 military buffs, environmentalists and others -- argued that the Navy should take its time to consider other options for cleaning up the hangar and began digging in for a political fight.

"If they've already made up their minds that they want to do this in a hurry, you're going to have to move mountains to get them to do otherwise," said former Navy officer Carl Honaker.

Honaker is hoping to do just that. Along with community activist Bob Moss and local pilot Steve Williams, Honaker is drafting a position statement for the group, which it will discuss at its next meeting. Details will be posted on Williams's Web site, www.nuqu.org.

Group members expressed confidence that politicians from the local level to U.S. Senate would support their effort. A representative of County Supervisor Liz Kniss and a Sunnyvale City Council member attended the meeting.

"This is being discussed at the higher levels of government," said Lenny Siegel, a Mountain View resident who convened the group after the Navy generated an outcry with its announcement at an advisory board meeting last Thursday. "This battle, politically, will take years," he added.

Navy brass is hoping that is not the case. Officials have increased pressure on those in charge of the cleanup to finish their work at Moffett as quickly and cheaply as possible. The Navy is now scheduled to make its final decision on the hangar's fate Sept. 2.

"We've been there over 10 years with no benefit from the property," said Rick Weissenborn, the Navy's lead remedial project manager at the former base, which closed in 1994. "There is a lot of concern about how much money we're spending and the benefit we're getting for it."

Weissenborn said he is hoping to start work on Hangar One in January and be done by next November, a timeline that has drawn plenty of criticism from those who pay close attention to the Moffett cleanup.

A $3 million paint job applied two years ago is starting to wear off sooner than expected, and NASA is again finding evidence that chemicals from the hangar are making their way toward a polluted stormwater pond known as Site 25.

The Navy has already committed to spending nearly $10 million to clean up Site 25, but can't start work there until it has dealt with the hangar.

"What the Navy would like to do is transfer ownership [of the hangar] and run like hell the other direction," said Moss, who is co-chair of the Restoration Advisory Board, assembled to bring public comment to the Navy.

Demolition of the hangar could run as high as $100 million, according to several of those present at Tuesday night's meeting. That figure is higher than previous estimates due to the costs of hauling and disposing of the material as well as the impacts on Moffett's infrastructure. For comparison, the Navy spent about that much over the last 10 years of cleaning up 25 other sites throughout the base.

But if residents are to stave off demolition, they know they must come up with a better alternative. One idea discussed Tuesday involved chemically treating the PCBs embedded in the hangar's siding, while others said that an epoxy coating could last up to 50 years and be much cheaper. Most agreed that they would not mind if the Navy stripped the siding as long as it was replaced with something similar.

The Navy has refused to do so, arguing that it can't spend clean-up money on a restoration project. But NASA is still optimistic that it might attract a solar power company to replace the siding with photovoltaic panels, and has scheduled a site tour for interested companies Sept. 6.

The hangar was originally built in 1932 to house the U.S.S. Macon, a rigid airship the size of the Titanic. Honaker pointed out that the Navy was able to build the hangar only after local chambers of commerce raised nearly half a million dollars to buy the land, which they turned over to the Navy for a dollar.

"It's not just Mountain View's or Sunnyvale's or Moffett Field's. It's a part of the Bay Area's history," said Honaker, who served as the last executive officer at Moffett Field before the Navy closed the base and transferred it to NASA in 1994.

The Macon sank a year and a half after the hangar opened, and the structure has been put to various uses since. But it has been empty since the 2003 discovery that contaminants from the hangar were leaching into the surrounding environment. The Moffett Field Museum was forced to find a new home, and plans were shelved for a huge air and space museum inside the hangar.

A closer study revealed that the structure itself consisted of nearly 20 percent toxic materials. The Navy has backed off earlier statements that its objective is to get rid of the source of contamination -- which can only be accomplished through demolition or dismantling of the hangar -- saying instead that it wants to "control" the source.

Frank Carradona, attending the Tuesday meeting as "an interested citizen," said the hangar is a part of our history. "The thought of it going out of existence is just abhorrent to me."

E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com

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