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i

33–591 2007

[H.A.S.C. No. 109–123]

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

MANAGEMENT OF HISTORIC AND

HISTORIC-ELIGIBLE FACILITIES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

READINESS SUBCOMMITTEE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

HEARING HELD

MARCH 8, 2006

(II)

READINESS SUBCOMMITTEE

JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado, Chairman

JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina

JIM RYUN, Kansas

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia

JEFF MILLER, Florida

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama

JOE SCHWARZ, Michigan

CATHY MCMORRIS, Washington

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

HOWARD P. ‘‘BUCK’’ MCKEON, California

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina

ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut

JEB BRADLEY, New Hampshire

CANDICE MILLER, Michigan

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona

SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas

LANE EVANS, Illinois

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi

NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii

SILVESTRE REYES, Texas

VIC SNYDER, Arkansas

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California

JIM MARSHALL, Georgia

KENDRICK B. MEEK, Florida

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam

TIM RYAN, Ohio

MARK UDALL, Colorado

G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina

JEFF GREEN, Professional Staff Member

ANDREW HUNTER, Professional Staff Member

HEATHER MESSERA, Staff Assistant

(III)

C O N T E N T S

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS

2006

Page

HEARING:

Wednesday, March 8, 2006, Department of Defense Management of Historic

and Historic-Eligible Facilities ............................................................................ 1

APPENDIX:

Wednesday, March 8, 2006 ..................................................................................... 25

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 2006

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE MANAGEMENT OF HISTORIC AND

HISTORIC-ELIGIBLE FACILITIES

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Hefley, Hon. Joel, a Representative from Colorado, Chairman, Readiness Subcommittee .............................................................................................................. 1

Ortiz, Hon. Solomon P., a Representative from Texas, Ranking Member,

Readiness Subcommittee ..................................................................................... 3

WITNESSES

Armbruster, Hon. William A., Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army, Installations & Environment, Privatization and Partnerships, Department of the

Army ...................................................................................................................... 7

Flock, Brig. Gen. James F., Assistant Deputy Commandant for Installations

and Logistics, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps .............................................. 10

Grone, Hon. Philip W., Deputy Under Secretary for Installations and Environment, Office of the Secretary of Defense ............................................................ 4

Kuhn, Hon. Fred W., Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Installations, Department of the Air Force ..................................................................... 11

Shear, Rear Adm. Wayne G., Commander of U.S. Naval Installations, Director, Ashore Readiness Division, Office of Chief of Naval Operations .............. 9

APPENDIX

PREPARED STATEMENTS:

Armbruster, Hon. William A. .......................................................................... 45

Flock, Brig. Gen. James F. .............................................................................. 68

Grone, Hon. Philip W. ...................................................................................... 29

Kuhn, Hon. Fred W. ......................................................................................... 78

Shear, Rear Adm. Wayne G. ............................................................................ 56

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

[There were no Documents submitted.]

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:

Mr. Jones ........................................................................................................... 89

Dr. Snyder ......................................................................................................... 89

Mr. Taylor ......................................................................................................... 89

(1)

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE MANAGEMENT OF

HISTORIC AND HISTORIC-ELIGIBLE FACILITIES

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, READINESS SUBCOMMITTEE, Washington, DC, Wednesday, March 8, 2006.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:01 p.m., in room

2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Joel Hefley (chairman

of the subcommittee) presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOEL HEFLEY, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM COLORADO, CHAIRMAN, READINESS SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. HEFLEY. The committee, such as it is, will come to order.

Today, the Readiness Subcommittee meets to hear testimony

from the Department of Defense (DOD) on the management of historic facilities.

Historic property management is a challenging task for the Department. Not only is DOD responsible for managing tens of thousands of historic properties, ranging from hangars to houses and

barracks to bunkers, but their properties are often greatly appreciated by local historians.

While the Department has a responsibility to identify and preserve these historic facilities under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, for many properties the price of doing so is becoming a difficult one to bear.

Over the past year, I have personally walked through the historic

homes of the Army chief of staff, the Air Force chief of staff, the

chief of naval operations and the superintendent of West Point. I

have seen the tremendous amount of work that needs to go into

these facilities to repair and upgrade them to modern standards.

And in many cases, I cannot imagine the day that Congress will

provide the amount of money necessary to fund all of these necessary repairs.

For example, last year, the Army requested authority to spend more than $1 million to repair the roof at the superintendent’s

home at West Point, New York. According to the Army, this home

may require an additional $6 million in repairs, even after the roof

structures are fixes.

Also, last year, the Navy requested authority to spend more than $300,000 to study a mold problem at an historic house at the Navy

Yard in Washington, D.C., but according to the Navy, complete repairs to this unit are likely to cost between $2.6 million and $5.2

million.

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And most recently, the Navy submitted to spend over $5 million

for historic remediation at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, in

order to meet the terms of a negotiated settlement between the

State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), the Navy and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.

While preserving our nation’s history is important, the Federal

Government does not have unlimited resources, so it is essential

that we strike a balance between historic interests, common sense

and fiscal reason.

As much as we might want to keep and repair certain historic

houses, our nation simply cannot afford to spend millions of dollars

on any one home. We must find other ways to fund these needs,

reduce costs or transfer the asset to someone who can afford it.

I spend a large portion of my time in Congress working on DOD’s

facility budgets. I am well aware of the Department’s annual failure to fully fund and execute sustainment at base operations budget. I have seen the leaking barracks, the substandard child care development centers and failing family housing units that result fro

underfunding.

Readiness budgets, alike, are under extraordinary pressures.

Training, body armor, weapons, vehicles and daily operations all

cost great amounts of money. Failure to fund these requirements

costs readiness, a price that can be paid with the lives of our service members.

So it is in this context that we must consider the relative merits

of spending millions of dollars to repair any single housing unit.

Unfortunately, there are no simple solutions. We cannot and

should not tear every expensive historic structure. We cannot simply give every historic facility away without compromising the security of our installations, and we cannot afford the massive sums

necessary to support all the historic structures.

In my opinion, the solution is likely a combination of the following: First, DOD should take an aggressive a more aggressive approach of preservation for those facilities that are truly historic and

demolition of those that are not; second, DOD and Congress must

do some thinking outside of the box to find ways to reduce costs

associated with preservation; and, third, DOD must more frequently employ adaptive reuse, enhanced use leasing and other authorities to maximize the value of any given historic structure.

I hope that our witnesses will take this opportunity to have a

frank discussion with the subcommittee about these issues. I hope

that they will tell us about the true nature of the challenge, the

roadblocks to overcoming these challenges and share any ideas

they may have for more effective historic property management at

the Department of Defense.

This is not a new deal. Mr. Grone and I, back in 1995, took over

the Military Construction Committee, and we realized what a deplorable status our family housing was at many of the bases, and

we set about to develop what is now the Privatization Program,

which has done, and is still doing, a tremendous amount toward

getting our service members in decent housing.

But one of the things that always bothered us then, and now, at

least me, and I think Phil would agree, probably, is that while we

were clawing out with our fingernails trying to get the money for

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family housing so we would have adequate housing for our young

soldiers, we were also having to deal with these horribly expensive

historic properties.

And I am an historic preservationists. I like to preserve history,

and I often cite Warren Air Force Base as an example of how you

can take historic structures and use it for modern purposes. It was

a cavalry post and now is a missile base, beautifully done. There

are others that we could cite, but as I walk through some of these

deteriorating structured, I am just dismayed at what we ought to

be doing with them.

Someone asked me a while ago at lunch that mentioned that we

were having this hearing and they said, ‘‘Are you really going to

jump on them?’’ And I said, ‘‘No, we are not going to jump on them.

We want to sit down with them and decide together what ought to

be done to solve this problem.’’ And it is not an endless source of

money.

Let me refer now and turn the microphone over to Solomon Ortiz

who has, during most of this time, been with me in this process,

as we have tried to struggle with this. And, obviously, we have not

come up with the answer yet, and we hope our witnesses will.

Solomon, I turn it over to you.

STATEMENT OF HON. SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, A REPRESENTATIVE

FROM TEXAS, RANKING MEMBER, READINESS SUBCOMMITTEE

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I join you in welcoming

our distinguished witnesses, and I look forward to hearing their

testimony on this very important issue.

Historic facilities are a difficult issue for this committee and the

DOD to tackle. Our country may not be old by many standards, but

we have a storied history in which our military has played a very,

very vital role. It is impossible to separate many of the significant

events in our national history from the military or its facilities. Locations like West Point, Pearl Harbor, Hill Air Force Base and

Quantico are some representatives of the rich history.

The culture of the military and its connections to the past makes

it especially difficult to solve some of the problems that will be presented by our witnesses today.

Historic buildings can be expensive to maintain and are often not

easily converted for modern purposes. In my district, there are

Navy aircraft hangars that required very expensive renovations because of the historic status. This presented a significant financial

and time problems for the installations as it attempted to balance

its historic preservation duties against its mission in a constrained

facilities maintenance budget.

I recognize the upkeep and operation of historic structures is a

strain for the Department of Defense. The services did not ask to

be saddled with old buildings, leaking roofs and mold in the basements, but it is their slice of American history, and they are currently the stewards of that history.

I believe that a careful balance must be struck between preservation and progress. We must seek innovative solutions that will

serve our past but allow us to move forward into the future.

4

Mr. Chairman, the military’s mission is to defend our nation.

This is their paramount task. But they also must balance other interests when meeting this mission. They must be good stewards of

the environment, the employees and in this case the nation’s history. I look forward to hearing the testimony of our witnesses and

their thoughts on how we can continue to honor our past and provide for the national defense. And, you know, my good friend is

going to abandoned me. He said he is thinking about retirement.

I hope he changes his mind so we can find a solution to this problem.

Mr. HEFLEY. Good. And let’s hope it will not take that long, but

I may have to get back in the race, Solomon, if we do not get this

solved.

Mr. ORTIZ. I hope so.

Mr. HEFLEY. But it is something that, as both of us have stated,

that we have all been working on a long time, and we really do

need to find a solution.

And I do not know anybody that has devoted himself to looking

at this more than you have, Mr. Grone. Of course, you did not have

such a long and fancy title when you started looking at this, and

I want you to know, this committee is impressed.

And so we will turn the microphone over to you, and then we will

kind of go down the line there with your thoughts and hopefully

with your answers to the problem.

STATEMENT OF HON. PHILIP W. GRONE, DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY FOR INSTALLATIONS AND ENVIRONMENT, OFFICE

OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

Secretary GRONE. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ortiz,

members of the subcommittee. It is, indeed, a pleasure to be back

before the Subcommittee on Readiness to discuss matters of general management practice for the Department of Defense.

And this afternoon, in particular, I am pleased to be here to discuss our management of historic properties in the built environment as well as other cultural resources that are managed by the

Department of Defense.

And I appear here with a multiplicity of capacities. I am the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Installations and Environment.

I am the senior policy official for Federal Preservation in the Department and the Secretary’s representative to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation as well as the senior real property officer of the Department of Defense.

And, in many ways, what we are doing is unifying our treatment,

unifying our policy approaches within the context of the inventory

in a comprehensive asset management strategy to provide for some

of the solutions or at least a path forward on some of the solutions

that both the chairman and the ranking member spoke of the need

to secure.

The Department currently manages nearly 507,000 buildings and

structures with a plant replacement value of over $650 billion and

more than 46,000 square miles of real estate. And as part of that

inventory, DOD has management responsibility for 75 national historic landmarks, as well as nearly 600 historic entries listed on the

National Register of Historic Places, which encompass more than

5

19,000 individual historic properties—buildings, structures, objects

and sites—located on over 200 military installations.

And within the inventory itself, the Department currently manages nearly 345,000 buildings. The National Historic Preservation

Act (NHPA) requires us to evaluate properties when they reach 50

years of age to determine if they are eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. Currently, about 32 percent of DOD’s buildings are older than 50 years, and based upon current inventory

forecasts that do not yet take into account the effects of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC), that percentage will increase rapidly over the next 20 years.

Ten years from now, the inventory could have over 55 percent of

our inventory older than 50 years, and we will need to evaluate

each of those buildings to determine their eligibility for the register

and therefore whether they are subject to the requirements of the

National Historic Preservation Act. And in 20 years, that percentage could grow to nearly two-thirds.

Our efforts, however, are focused on the development of a comprehensive program that enables us to manage these resources efficiently and effectively.

Executive Order 13327, concerning Federal real property asset

management, requires all Federal agencies to identify and categorize all Federal real property. In addition, Executive Order

13287, concerning Preserve America, requires all Federal agencies

to improve their accountability of their historic property assets.

And working in concert, these executive orders present a unique

opportunity to integrate how the treatment and management of

historic properties into the broader real property asset management process of the Department, frankly, as assets that must meet

the day-to-day mission needs of all Federal agencies, to include the

Department of Defense.

And to speak frankly to a couple of the points that the chairman

and ranking member have made, there are three items I would like

to just mention very briefly. One is the question of data, what are

we doing to understand what we own, where it is and what its condition is.

As part of the Business Management Modernization Program for

which this subcommittee has jurisdictional oversight, we are working to provide that kind of data that GAO has previously and rightly criticized us for lacking in our inventory control processes. And

as we are planning historic status, worked out in concert with the

Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, for purposes of the

broader Federal real property inventory reporting requirements,

has been adequately defined as part of our Federal responsibility,

the interagency responsibility, as well as those internal to the Department.

As of today, our plan would have the Army and Washington

Headquarter Services reporting historic status, comprehensively

with the fiscal year 2005 inventory report, per the guidance of the

Federal Real Property Council. The Air Force and the Navy will be

submitting those revised inventory reports with the fiscal year

2006 inventory submission. So we are making progress significantly on the question of raw data.

6

Second, to the question of program approaches and asset management planning, the assets that the chairman, in particular,

spoke about are important assets. They are critical assets, and we

can talk about those particular projects in detail as our discussion

today evolves.

We often think, and many often think, of the National Historic

Preservation Act in the context of its 106 and the consultation

process around singular and specific assets; in many cases, the assets that the chairman mentioned. That is important in and of

itself and provides a process that is critically important.

But the National Historic Preservation Act also provides for alternative processes that have allowed us the latitude, in working

with the interagency, working with external stakeholders, state

historic preservation officers, tribes, as well as the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, to design a process that utilizes full

programmatic approaches.

The Program Comment, fully authorized under the 1966 act, utilized for the first time in the context of Capehart-Wherry housing

for the Department of the Army. And building on that approach

with the programs of the Navy and Marine Corps and the United

States Air Force, we now have 82,000 units of Capehart-Wherry

era housing that are subject to the programmatic agreement with

the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.

That process, that approach, streamlines our compliance costs.

We estimate that we will save $80 million to $90 million in compliance costs through the utilization of that one programmatic treatment.

Now, we are building on that for the future with programmatic

approaches to take on the question of post-World War II era barracks and ammunition storage facilities. The Navy is also looking

to a programmatic approach to deal with the question of Navy

ships.

So we are using the act flexibly, creatively in ways that are authorized by the statute but with a new business approach and a

new business model to try to provide treatment for, appropriate

documentation of but not necessarily the direct preservation of

each unit of a given class of housing. And that is a critically important balancing act that we are effectively utilizing.

For our overarching business practices, the chairman spoke

about the question of sustainment, the question of base operating

support, the question of our facilities recapitalization strategy. The

President’s budget request provides for 90 percent of the need to

sustain our facilities. Last year, we improved our execution of facilities sustainment significantly, and we are looking with controls

in our financial systems to improve that execution every year.

Critically important in the development of our sustainment and

recapitalization model are that we are continuing to improve our

private sector benchmarks, to improve the benchmarks that we

draw from the public sector, to ensure that as we build a program

and a budget that we have an adequate understanding of the cost

of maintaining our facilities.

And as the members know, it is a significant and sizeable hole

which we have dug ourselves over many, many years. Adequate

7

sustainment is the foundation of our broader facilities strategy in

which historic properties are also a part.

And one of the reasons that a number of reports have demonstrated that the cost of historic assets and the maintenance of

them are so high is because they have lacked adequate facilities,

they would call it maintenance, we would call it sustainment, over

many years. And that once those assets are normalized for adequate sustainment, once they are normalized in relation to size and

put on a square footage basis, the cost to sustain those assets over

time is roughly equivalent, if only marginally more expensive, for

an historic asset than it is for a non-historic asset. All the data,

all the private sector data demonstrate that.

The question is, will we undertake the business approaches that

the chairman spoke about—enhanced use leasing, furthering that

as part of the area within the Department’s management responsibility? Will we forcefully move out on further adaptive reuse? We

are all committed to looking at new approaches in both the enhanced use lease area and in adaptive reuse to provide ourselves

with a solid foundation for the future.

In addition, we are privatizing a good number of our housing assets through the military housing privatization initiative with appropriate treatment for historic character, landscapes, viewscapes

in a way that is consistent with what state historic preservation officers have consulted with us upon.

So we are building a variety of tools in our toolkit to deal with

the underlying problems in historic properties. We will not turn

this problem around tomorrow, but I believe that we, as a department, have begun to put ourselves on sound management footing,

looking ahead to the future to be able to treat these assets with the

full mission capability that they deserve.

The key is appropriate asset management at the end of the day,

while recognizing our responsibility for cultural resource preservation in the context of the mission needs of the Department of Defense. And, again, we believe that the policy approach that we have

taken, the management approach that we have taken is leading us

down that path.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Secretary Grone can be found in the

Appendix on page 29.]

Mr. HEFLEY. Thank you, Mr. Grone.

And now representing the Army, Mr. Bill Armbruster.

STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM A. ARMBRUSTER, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE ARMY, INSTALLATIONS & ENVIRONMENT, PRIVATIZATION AND PARTNERSHIPS, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY

Secretary ARMBRUSTER. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, it is a pleasure for me to be here today to represent the

Army and to discuss the Army’s historic properties program.

The Army is a responsible steward of our historic legacy and the

cultural resources that have been entrusted to us. As the oldest of

the defense services, the Army has strong ties to its history and the

places that have helped to shape this country’s destiny.

8

Of our U.S. inventory of over 153,000 structures and buildings,

41 percent currently are over 50 years old and are subject to compliance of the NHPA. And in the next 20 years, 68 percent of our

buildings will be over 50 years and require NHPA compliance.

Well, this large and growing inventory of historic properties obviously poses a challenge and has cost implications that we must address, but there continue to be questions regarding the high cost

of renovating and maintaining historic properties.

And as Mr. Grone has indicated, evaluations and studies have

shown that when reviewed over the per square foot or the life cycle

of this particular structure, that the costs are approximately the

same as for non-historic buildings and often the initial costs for

materials used in historic buildings are high, but those materials

last longer and they result in a life cycle cost savings.

We in the Army continue to seek innovative solutions to address

the challenges of limited funding, underutilized space and compliance requirements. There are three options for us in managing our

historic properties. We can use and maintain them, we can privatize them or we can demolish them.

The Army chooses to use and maintain most of our historic properties, and in concert with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, we have established several initiatives to streamline the

project management and consultation processes and reduce costs.

Mr. Grone has referred to most of these, but, of course, one of

our most important and effective NHPA compliance tools is to address our growing inventory through the Program Comment. And

in conjunction with the advisory council, the Army completed a

Program Comment for Cold War era Capehart-Wherry housing, as

Mr. Grone had mentioned. And this satisfied the NHPA compliance

requirements for nearly 20,000 Army buildings and has proven especially beneficial for family housing privatization projects under

our residential communities initiative.

Additional Program Comments are in the final stage of coordination, as Mr. Grone indicated—World War II, Cold War era barracks, ammo storage facilities and ammo plants as well. These Program Comments will satisfy the NHPA compliance requirements

for approximately 35,000 Army buildings.

Now, the Army has also initiated something we call the Army alternate procedures, and this is a unique NHPA compliance approach that streamlines the process and allows installations to better manage compliance requirements. These alternate procedures

are based on consultation and agreement among key stakeholders

to create a five-year NHPA compliance plan.

These procedures eliminate the need for consulting on individual

projects and allow installations to proceed in accordance with

agreed standards. We have just learned that our first pilot effort

under the alternate procedures process has been approved at Fort

Sam Houston in Texas, and this was approved by the advisory

council last week.

We expect that Fort Benning, Georgia will follow shortly as a

second pilot effort, and we have about seven additional installations in the queue to implement this program.

The Army is also pursuing enhanced use leasing of historic properties to the private sector. At Fort Sam Houston in Texas, the

9

Army leased to a private developer three historic buildings, containing approximately a half million square feet of space. The resulting actions preserved the buildings and eliminated the Army’s

responsibility to rehabilitate and maintain them. And we are

pursing another enhanced use leasing opportunity for the William

Beaumont Hospital Historic District at Fort Bliss, Texas.

There are 278 historic buildings identified as important by the

SHPO in Texas that were competitively offered to the private sector for restoration and utilization. Now, the selected bidder and the

Army are currently negotiating a business and lease plan that we

hope will lead to the execution of a lease.

The Army is also taking advantage of the private sector by including these properties in our residential communities initiative,

or RCI. And you mentioned that, Mr. Chairman. The Army is very

proud of that program. We have achieved phenomenal success with

RCI, and, to date, we have privatized 64,000 homes at 27 installations. And included in this number are over 2,500 historic units.

And, finally, I want to tell you about a program the Army has

initiated, which we call the Army Community Heritage Partnerships Program. And this initiative is intended to strengthen the

economic, historic and social ties between Army installations and

the adjacent communities. The program, which is now extended to

seven communities, supports the President’s executive order, Preserve America, and it partners with the National Trust Main

Street Center.

In concluding my comments, Mr. Chairman, the Army has a

wealth of historic properties that support our mission requirements. We are proud of our leadership role. It balances stewardship with responsible management of historic property.

We appreciate your continued support for our initiatives, and I

look forward to discussing this topic further with members of the

subcommittee.

Thank you very much, sir.

[The prepared statement of Secretary Armbruster can be found

in the Appendix on page 45.]

Mr. HEFLEY. Thank you, Mr. Armbruster.

And now representing the Navy, Rear Admiral Wayne Shear.

Mr. Shear.

STATEMENT OF REAR ADM. WAYNE G. SHEAR, COMMANDER

OF U.S. NAVAL INSTALLATIONS, DIRECTOR, ASHORE READINESS DIVISION, OFFICE OF CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS

Admiral SHEAR. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members. I am

the director of ashore readiness in the Office of Chief of Naval Operations and really appreciate the opportunity to speak today about

the Navy’s program for complying with the National Historic Preservation Act.

Historic buildings, clearly, just as in the Army, are a valuable

part of our portfolio. They remind us of the people and events of

our history, and they are important to our veterans, our retirees

and our communities and certainly the people that work on our installations.

As has been noted previously, the Navy, as well as the other

services, have been able to strike a balance between mission reVerDate 22-MAR-2001 09:04 Sep 26, 2007 Jkt 033591 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\109-123\067030.000 HNS1 PsN: HNS1
10

quirements and rehabilitation of historic buildings in a way that

supports our mission and effectively uses those assets and strikes

a solid balance. The Navy Yard right here is an excellent example

of this on a very large scale.

Other situations, and you have noted a couple, are more challenging. Some historic properties are easily adapted to changing requirements. Other buildings, especially temporary structures or

specialized structures, may be much harder to adapt.

In some places, the mission of the installations has changed over

the years. You noted the national historic landmark at the Naval

Air Station Pensacola. It includes properties from the 19th century

Pensacola Navy Yard, seaplane facilities associated with the first

days of naval aviation early in the 20th century, and the district

is located on the waterfront, as you would expect navy yard and

seaplane facilities to be. However, the mission focus of the installation has shifted away from the waterfront years ago.

The national historic landmark district bore the full force of Hurricane Ivan in the fall of 2004, as you well know. Now, the naval

air station mission is no longer focused on the waterfront. We had

to think very carefully with the help of Congress about how to balance our risk for future storms with the preservation of that historic resource and continuing the mission effectively in Pensacola.

Historic property management offers opportunities as well as

challenges, as we have seen, and we appreciate the leadership of

the Department of Defense in exploring new ways to succeed. We

have been able to partner with other services and organizations to

streamline our compliance actions, where appropriate to find continued use for historic buildings and to ensure our real property inventories accurately reflect historic buildings.

We look forward to answering your questions and working with

you on this very important issue. Thanks for the opportunity to

speak today.

[The prepared statement of Admiral Shear can be found in the

Appendix on page 56.]

Mr. HEFLEY. Thank you, Admiral.

And now representing the Marine Corps is Brigadier General

James Flock.

General Flock.

STATEMENT OF BRIG. GEN. JAMES F. FLOCK, ASSISTANT DEPUTY COMMANDANT FOR INSTALLATIONS AND LOGISTICS,

HEADQUARTERS, U.S. MARINE CORPS

General FLOCK. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of

the committee. I am the assistant deputy commandant for installations and logistics, Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps. I appreciate

this opportunity to appear before you today, and with your approval, I will submit my full statement for the record and give you

a brief summary of that statement.

I am particularly pleased that you have chosen to focus on the

management of historic buildings by the military services. These

buildings remind us of the sacrifices and accomplishments of those

that have gone before us. In short, they inspire us to continue to

strive to be the best and serve as touchstones that bind all Americans to a common heritage.

11

We are proud to be the stewards of these resources; however,

they pose a management challenge.

Although we are a small military service in terms of the numbers

of installations we manage, these installations support about 7,000

buildings that are over 50 years old. Of these, 347 buildings are

currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including 6 general officer quarters. An additional 398 buildings are eligible for listing on the national register.

Our inventory of historic eligible buildings has the potential to

grow to over 14,000 buildings in the next 10 years. We have demolished some historic family housing buildings and are developing

plans to demolish more. Ultimately, about 4,000 family housing

dwellings will be replaced with new construction through a variety

of means, including public and private ventures.

In 1994, we implemented a long-term plan to properly care for

our historic general officer quarters with limited disruption to the

occupants and minimal financial impact on the remainder of the

family housing program. We successfully completed this program in

2002.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank the committee for its interest and support in our management of historic

buildings. We take our stewardship of these resources very seriously. Many of these resources are national icons, and we view

their protection as a moral imperative.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement. I will be pleased to

answer any questions you may have.

[The prepared statement of General Flock can be found in the

Appendix on page 68.]

Mr. HEFLEY. Thank you, General Flock.

And, Mr. Kuhn, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the United States

Air Force Installations, would you please present to the committee.

STATEMENT OF HON. FRED W. KUHN, DEPUTY ASSISTANT

SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE FOR INSTALLATIONS, DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE

Secretary KUHN. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ortiz, members of the subcommittee, it is indeed a pleasure to be with you today to talk about this subject.

The Air Force well recognizes that there is a balance between

preserving the nation’s history, which has been entrusted to us at

our installations, and the costs associated with maintaining those

buildings.

Rather than go into great detail and perhaps be repetitive of my

colleagues to my right, because we do share the same issues, I

would like to highlight four areas that the Air Force is at least attempting to focus on as we deal with this problem.

One, as Mr. Grone said, the programmatic comment process associated with Wherry housing I think is a very significant process;

adaptive reuse, which we have or about to use, both in housing and

in non-housing buildings associated with the Historic Preservation

Act; housing privatization itself, our housing privatizations are

whole-based, everything is included, including the historics, and we

are trying to work our way through some mechanisms that will

12

allow the historic nature of a house to perhaps be a tax incentive

to the successful offeror.

And, finally, we think that if we could develop, and are developing now, a real property asset management system that will allow

us to drill down into the costs of any building, both its historic nature and its non-historic nature, I think we would be able to have

a much better grasp on the problem.

With that, I would like to yield any remaining time I have to

you, Mr. Chairman, for the discussion period.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Secretary Kuhn can be found in the

Appendix on page 78.]

Mr. HEFLEY. Well, thank you very much, all of you.

I think I will defer my questions until later and turn it over to

Mr. Solomon if you have questions.

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You know, it appears that each service is managing their historic

facilities in a decentralized fashion. Individual installations are

forced to negotiate directly with the state historic preservation offices and on the local level, and I have seen that in my state and

my community.

This decentralized management fails to establish a uniform

standard for maintaining historic facilities and fails to assist the

local installations when extreme local requirements are placed

upon a base.

Do you feel that the Department will benefit from a more centralized management of historic facilities? Anyone that would like

to answer.

Secretary KUHN. At least, I think my Air Force view is going to

be that I think that negotiating and dealing with these issues at

the installation level is the place we need to start. Historic preservation is one of the many consultative processes we engage in at

the installation level with both the state and the Federal regulators, be they environmental, historic preservation, et cetera.

I think that that process has worked for us. If there have been

abuses, they have never come to my attention. Could they always

be better? I am sure, but I think we have attempted and are pretty

much striking the balance between historic preservation and costs.

And I think the more we deal with that person at the installation

level face to face, it seems to have been working for the United

States Air Force.

Secretary ARMBRUSTER. I might just add——

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you. Go ahead.

Secretary ARMBRUSTER [continuing]. For the Army, I would echo

what Mr. Kuhn was saying. We work very closely with the SHPOs

and have found in most cases the SHPOs to be very cooperative

and it has been a good relationship.

We have provided guidance to our installations just in the last

couple of years to ensure that they know the process and they are

working very closely again with the state officials as well as with

our headquarters efforts and with OSD. We work very closely with

Mr. Grone’s office and with the ACHP as well.

13

So I think we have got the procedures in place, and we have

strengthened the hand of our garrison commanders in terms of how

they deal in a responsible way with their historic properties.

Mr. ORTIZ. Thank you.

Secretary GRONE. Mr. Ortiz, if—I am sorry, Admiral, do you

want to carry forward? We will do the services first.

Admiral SHEAR. If I could make one comment. In the last two

years, the Navy has organized with the commander of Navy Installations Command, and that has really helped us make a focus on

this and many other areas from a portfolio standpoint across the

entire Department of the Navy. So we have a cultural resources expert, we can make decisions looking across the whole Navy now

that we could not really do as effectively a couple years ago. So I

think we have gotten better in that regard.

Secretary GRONE. Mr. Ortiz, from an Office of the Secretary of

Defense (OSD) level perspective, certainly, the services execute programs. Much of that negotiation, as was mentioned, occurs at the

local level, and as issues need to be resolved, they move up through

the varying service management structures for installations.

But what we are trying to provide at the defense-wide level—and

on page 10 of my prepared remarks there is an enumeration of

some of the most recent projects and programmatic development

that we have been working on on a joint basis to ensure consistency of treatment.

So whether it is providing a sustainability guide, as we have previously for historic properties, working on now what we are working on, a handbook for contracting in the cultural resource compliance area at DOD installations, we are developing individual tools.

In some cases, they will be guidance, and in some cases, they will

be guides or checklists or very technical manuals to give installation commanders and people who execute our installation programs, at whatever level in the process they need to be executed,

have consistency of treatment, consistency of guidance so that as

they enter into a consultative process at the local, state or Federal

level, that there is a solid foundation on which they can have that

consultation.

So in my mind, one of the important management approaches

that we have tried to take is to try to provide that unitary set of

guidance and structure to how to treat the asset so that in the field

people have some surety about how to proceed.

Mr. ORTIZ. How do you, when you do it at the local level—and

maybe this is the way to do it—how do you budget? I mean, how

do you set priorities as to which facility should get the money? I

mean, how do you work that?

When you make a request—let’s say we have 10 states that have

10 old facilities. How do you set priorities so that you get enough

funding to take care of that one or two, three facilities?

Secretary ARMBRUSTER. Well, the Army, through its installations

management agency, we work very closely with each installation,

submitting their budget requirements and requests based on their

installation and facilities requirements. And those come forward as

military construction (MILCON) requests. And do we make a distinction between the historic properties? Again, depending on misVerDate 22-MAR-2001 09:04 Sep 26, 2007 Jkt 033591 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\109-123\067030.000 HNS1 PsN: HNS1
14

sion need and requirements, that is how we are going to prioritize

them.

So we recognize in many cases, again, the initial cost for some

of our historic properties are going to be higher, but, as we was

commented on earlier, we feel like if we are successful in sustaining these facilities, that over the long haul those costs will be no

more than they would be for a newer construction building.

But we have a very good program for sustainment and, again,

identifying our mission needs and requirements. And, of course,

with the new restationing requirements and modularity that the

Army is facing, we have had to prioritize a number of those as well.

But we do not shortchange it in terms of whether they are historic

or not, but just on what the mission requirements might be.

Mr. ORTIZ. No more questions.

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. McHugh.

Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, welcome.

Secretary Grone, welcome back.

Secretary GRONE. Thank you, sir.

Mr. MCHUGH. Good to see you again. Just by way of comment,

I was somewhat surprised to hear the service representatives

strike such an optimistic tone with respect to dealing with the various SHPOs on a state-by-state basis. That is certainly good news.

I know in New York state we have had some challenges out at

West Point with regard to the superintendent’s home that is going

to cost about $7 million. I do not want all of that against the State

Historic Preservation Office, but, clearly, they have a significant

role to play.

Admiral, you commented at how you are making progress. You

had a lot of problems down at Pensacola. It took you a year, I believe, to get through that negotiation.

So I guess that is a long, around-the-dock way of saying to Secretary Grone, I am pleased you are trying to work to try to establish some reasonable parameter within which everybody’s interests

can be best served, because this is an enormous problem. I am stating the obvious.

I saw some data here. I have never seen these numbers, although I was pretty well aware of the initiative. GAO, 73,600 properties within the Department will turn 50 years of age by 2011,

and I guess that is one of the prime determinants.

How many properties—and if you gave this testimony earlier,

gentlemen, I apologize, I arrived a little late—but how many properties—let’s do it by department-wide—can you assess per year?

You get to 2011, you are sitting there with over 73,000 properties

that need to be assessed. How many are you going to knock off of

here?

Secretary GRONE. Well, Mr. McHugh, those numbers also include

individual to military family housing units. So if there were 3,000

Capehart-Wherry housings at an installations, there would be

3,000 items on that checklist that you were speaking about.

One of the items that we discussed earlier was this question of

programmatic treatment. And for individual assets, particularly

crown jewel or other significant assets, those individual eaches are

of significant consequence.

15

But when we were talking about whole classes of assets,

Capehart-Wherry era housing, hammerhead barracks, ammunition

storage bunkers and the like, what we are trying to do in consultation with the Advisory Council of Historic Preservation and the

interagency process and in close consultation and coordination with

the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers, is

to develop an approach that allows us to get beyond individual consultation on each one of those assets to a programmatic treatment

that allows us to document the significance of the assets as a class

of assets and that provides some surety and streamlining in the

consultative process.

And that allows us to do those assessments far more quickly, to

get on with programmatic approaches and the modernization of

some of those assets far more quickly than would otherwise be the

case.

Mr. MCHUGH. And I appreciate that, and that goes back, I think,

to my earlier compliment, intended to be a compliment, that that

needs to be done. But let’s set those aside. On those areas where

you have to go in and do a parcel-by-parcel evaluation, are you

aware of how many you can, on average, handle a year?

Secretary GRONE. I would have to check for the record on how

many we might do in a year. I have not looked at the question in

quite that way.

Mr. MCHUGH. That is an answer, and I appreciate that.

In our background materials, and this did not come directly from

your comments but I suspect it is consistent, stating the obvious,

it talks about the total, how many properties are out there to be

assessed. It says, the totals change regularly as historic properties

are removed from the inventory, period. Assuming it is not a categorical removal on an evaluation, how do you remove a property

that is deemed historic, say a Cold War era property, and take it

off? Do you know the process for that?

It just does not seem to me if you have got a property, in my experience, that is deemed historic you are going to get it off, short

of somebody blowing it up in the middle of the night.

Secretary GRONE. Well, I mean, if we are talking about—it depends on what we mean by historic in this context. Is it eligible,

is it listed, is it a national historic landmark? The process will vary

slightly for each of those. But at the highest level of sensitivity,

those items that are on the register, only the keeper of the register

at the Department of Interior has the authority to delist, and there

is a standard process for exercising that.

We have other classes of assets that may be 50 years old but for

which there is no historic value, an off warehouse or something like

that. And through our demolition programs and the identification

of that at the service level, if they execute their programs, we can

effectively do that.

Just a few years ago, in 1998, you recall there was a demolition

program established for the Department. And, ultimately, over a 6-

year period we took down, outside the BRAC process, 86 million

square feet of property. Some of that was—I do not know what the

percentage of it might have been—but there was no question some

of it was older World War II wood structures. With appropriate

consultation, we were able to move out on an effective demolition

16

program. And based on a renewed survey, which we started in

2004, the services have identified an additional 50 million square

feet, again, not necessarily related to the BRAC process, of

unneeded facilities that we intend to move out on to dispose of by

the year 2013.

So through our organic facility asset management process, and

this is why the question of data is so important, and getting our

inventory controls correct and understanding the condition of an

asset in relation to its age, in relation to the mission need, that

then provides a solid foundation for us to engage in consultation if

necessary, and then if deemed not historic, not worthy of being preserved for which there is no adaptive reuse ability, then we can

move out to remove those structures from the inventory. And that

is the framework within which we try to manage the program.

Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I see my time has expired. I did have another question, but maybe I could submit that

for the record.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, gentleman.

Mr. HEFLEY. Thank you, Mr. McHugh.

Mr. Snyder.

Dr. SNYDER. Mr. Chairman, let me—Mr. McHugh, let me yield

to you, like, two minutes or something so you can ask your final

question.

Mr. MCHUGH. I appreciate that. Thank the gentleman from Arkansas. I will be very brief. I take it by your answer—and I will

direct this to Secretary Grone—given the process, the categorization initiative you have underway there, you are not at this time

contemplating a request for any program legislation to amend the

procedures under the National Historic Preservation Act.

Secretary GRONE. I am not.

Mr. MCHUGH. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank the gentleman.

Dr. SNYDER. Sure. General Flock, I appreciate you gentlemen

being here today. This has kind of opened up a whole world for me

I had not really thought much about, but I wanted to ask a question on your written statement, General Flock.

I did not understand the last two or three sentences that begin

at the end of page seven of your written statement: ‘‘There is no

question that maintenance of historic buildings on a structural

basis appear to be more costly than buildings that are not historic.

However, it appears that the life cycle costs of historic buildings is

similar to non-historic structures.’’ I think it is the jargon for me.

I do not understand those last two sentences.

General FLOCK. Well, Mr. Snyder, the thought there was when

you take a look at the life-cycle costs of these buildings or when

you take a look at the cost of maintaining another type of building

that may not have historic significance, anecdotally, the difference

in cost may not be there.

Dr. SNYDER. I do not understand the first phrase of it that talks

about maintenance on a structural basis does appear to be more

costly. What does the phrase, ‘‘structural basis,’’ mean?

17

General FLOCK. Sir, the structural basis, we are talking about

the foundation, we are talking about the supports, the wall supports, but for the record, we will submit a more detailed response.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on

page 89.]

Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Jones.

Mr. JONES. Chairman, thank you very much, and I will be brief

with my questions.

I am like, I think, Mr. Snyder said, with all the issues dealing

with our military and sometimes we forget some of the important

things like the historical properties that you have been talking

about today, so this has really been very helpful.

I guess, and probably it is in the testimony from Secretary

Grone, but I did not read the testimony, I just got here, in the

budget—well, how much in the budget, what percent of the budget

is allocated for these properties that are 50 years old and also

those that have been designated as historical? Can you give me in

the billions or the millions? I am trying to get a feel for it, and

maybe, again, if I had read the testimony, it is in there, but I just

have not read it yet.

Secretary GRONE. Mr. Jones, I do not know that—well, we do not

budget that way for sustainment and recapitalization of assets that

are of a certain age. We have a programming and budget process

to develop the resource requirements that are necessary for the

sustainment and recapitalization of the entire asset base.

But in order to get at precisely those questions under the Federal

Real Property Council’s mandates for the development of revised

data to understand the cost of ownership, we are developing systems that will allow us to report costs at the constructed asset

level. We do not have that data with great precision across the Department today, very few agencies do.

But one of the things that we are doing under the context of the

President’s executive order on real property is to define a system

and data reporting requirements that allow us to speak to the cost

of ownership at the constructed asset level so that we are better

able to address the question that you have raised. And that, frankly, will give us better information to be able to make judgments

about adaptive reuse or disposal or privatization or whatever the

preferred method of coping with that asset might be.

Mr. JONES. General Flock, of the 7,000 homes that I believe you

said, if I heard it correctly, that are—I guess, 7,000 homes that are

50 years and older, being that I have Camp Lejeune and Cherry

Point down in my district, where are the majority of these homes—

and I know Camp Pendleton but where would the majority of those

homes be that—which base seems to have the largest number?

General FLOCK. Mr. Jones, the majority of our homes are going

to be at Camp Pendleton and at Camp Lejeune, but for the record,

I will provide you with a detailed list of exactly what bases those

homes are at.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on

page 89.]

Mr. JONES. Well, yesterday, I had a relic of the Marine Corps to

visit my office, the assassin, General Fred McCorkle.

18

General FLOCK. I know him well, sir. I have worked with that

gentleman.

Mr. JONES. That was quite a thrill for my staff, because they

have never met him, but we really enjoyed the visit.

Let me ask Secretary Armbruster, are you familiar with the civil

war cannon that was used during the civil war down at Fort Fisher

in Wilmington, North Carolina?

Secretary ARMBRUSTER. No, sir, I am not.

Mr. JONES. Well, it is probably not fair to do this, but I might

just drop you a note. This has been an ongoing issue. Somewhere

along the way I think it was sent back—excuse me, it was used

during the civil war down at Fort Fisher and it was on loan to

West Point and now it is on loan back to Fort Fisher, and I have

got a feeling that the state of North Carolina, which I am from

North Carolina, obviously, is going to be involved in that.

But we were somewhat working with Congressman McIntyre

along the way. But I might just drop you a note and ask you for

a current status on that issue in the months ahead.

Secretary ARMBRUSTER. Be glad to follow up on that, sir.

Mr. JONES. Thank you.

And, Admiral, I would like to—this is a little bit off course, Mr.

Chairman, but I think I have got two more minutes. You have

talked about the museum down at Pensacola, and this has nothing

to do with housing at all, but I hope maybe if I get reelected, I am

going to probably bring this up next year.

We got involved last year with a fellow from Minnesota who went

down to my district and recovered a Brewster Corsair out of the

swamps of Craven County and the pilot had ejected—or not ejected,

but parachuted and was killed, a Marine pilot, back in 1944.

And we ended up talking with Secretary England. This man was

being sued by the Federal Government because he recovered the

property, he was going to rebuild it and in the process of rebuilding

it, stripping it and everything, it will be original, as close as it can

be, when he finishes.

This has not to do with housing, but I wanted to bring this up

quickly. I do not understand the military’s position when there is

a property that is part of the history of this country and the military is not going to recover the property and they are not going to

rebuild it and they are not going to do those kind of things.

And this gentleman—real quickly, Mr. Chairman—this gentleman actually called the museum down at Pensacola, told them

what he had done, that he was going to rebuild the plane, it would

take him six, seven years to do it, and at that time he wanted to

donate the Corsair that could fly back to the museum, and the only

thing he wanted was that he would have another Corsair to recover

and rebuild.

The first gentleman he spoke to at the museum said, ‘‘This is a

great idea. There should be no problem.’’ And then the superintendent of the museum heard about it and he said, ‘‘That is our

property,’’ so they ended up suing him. It all worked itself out after

a year and a half, thanks to Secretary England and Mr. Mora, the

lawyer with the Navy.

But I guess what I wanted to bring that up, Mr. Chairman, I

think that some of these properties, the body has been removed

19

years ago, and some of these properties that are out there sitting,

rotting that could be part of the aviation or naval history of this

country, I hope next year—and I am sorry you will not be back, by

the way—but I hope that next year that maybe this committee, in

addition to what we are talking about today, will look into how we

can protect and preserve the military history of this country. So I

have rambled enough. Thank you for your time and your answers.

Thank you.

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Jones, could I cosponsor that anyway, because

I think you——

Mr. JONES. Absolutely. Yes, sir.

Mr. HEFLEY. I think you have a great idea, and I hope you will

pursue that.

Mr. JONES. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Taylor.

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Grone, this is just

an opportune moment to ask you a question non-related to today’s

subject but I hope within your jurisdiction.

As you know, late August the hurricane hit the Mississippi Gulf

coast. I feel very confident that our Navy construction battalion has

been adequately—that the plan is there to rebuild that installation.

I feel very good about Keesler Air Force Base.

I have great troubles when it comes to the Armed Forces Retirement Naval Home. It is my understanding from walking the building that almost nothing has been done to that installation since the

storm. In fact, the staff has been let go in spite of the fact that

Congress has allocated about $60 million toward that project.

Now, that home, although it is fairly new, is the latest of a historical commitment to our nation’s veterans. The citizens have

spent about $45 million to build that facility. And just last week

a commission, I presume, put together by Secretary Rumsfeld, has

been coming back with some numbers. I think the low number was,

like, $90 million and a high end of $590 million to fix or replace

it.

What is going on? And I would remind you, Mr. Grone, that you

did not say it, I did not say it, but no one less than the President

of the United States stood on the gymnasium floor at St. Stanislaus

High School in Bay St. Louis and said, quote, he was going to repair every Federal installation on the Mississippi Gulf coast.

That is a Federal installation, and so what is happening? What

is the game plan? Because no one has articulated it on behalf of

the Administration what we are going to do to fix that facility.

Secretary GRONE. Well, Mr. Taylor, I, frankly, became aware of

your concern on the question this afternoon. The armed forces retirement homes are not within my direct policy jurisdiction. They

are generally managed from a policy perspective by the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, but I understand the

concern and the concern that you have expressed here today.

I will go back and look into the question, and we will come back

to you with an answer as quickly as we are able, because it is an

important question and one you have raised some justified concern

with, and we should get you an appropriate answer.

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on

page 89.]

20

Mr. TAYLOR. Okay. Can you give me a timeline when I can expect an answer? Because, quite frankly, given the immediate needs

of the citizens, this was kind of put on the backburner. But now

that things are starting to get stabilized, it is a concern, it is a Federal installation, we have sunk a lot of money into it, and, quite

frankly, it is a commitment to those guys who have been since

picked up, transported to D.C. who would like to be returned to the

Mississippi Gulf coast.

Second thing is—I am searching for a little help on this—I know

that somewhere in the naval inventory, the USS Constitution is

still carried on the books. One of the downsides of the storm was

that hundreds of ancient oak trees, live oaks, were destroyed. The

only good that could possibly come of that is if someone, if you

could put us in touch with someone in the Navy who would be looking for that lumber since it is undoubtedly some of the best oak

lumber you are ever going to find.

If we could be put in touch with the folks responsible for the USS

Constitution so that it just does not go to a landfill, that hopefully

that if there is a use for it on the ship, that they could come down,

survey it before this stuff is hauled off and either just shredded or

burned.

Admiral SHEAR. Sir, I understand that we did some of that after

Hurricane Hugo, so I would imagine we could do the same thing.

Mr. TAYLOR. Again, I will hopefully just pass the information on,

and I hope you get it in the hands of the right people. Secretary

Grone, again, please place a priority on the naval home.

Secretary GRONE. Yes, sir. I will go back and whatever I know

this afternoon I will give you a call back and tell you what I know.

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Abercrombie.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Grone,

what a pleasure to be able to say that to you. And I do not know,

Mr. Chairman, whether it has already been said for purposes of the

record, but it is difficult for me to call you, Mr. Secretary, Phil because of my personal affection for you and my high regard for the

work you did while you were working with this committee and

most particularly with Mr. Hefley.

Secretary GRONE. Thank you, sir.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. You have, Mr. Chairman, I will say a record

of staff and members meeting the needs and the requests of the

membership on behalf of the people of this country that will be the

envy of any member serving on this committee and I can tell you

of any member that has ever served in this body. You will rank in

the very top row, as far as this member is concerned and as far

as every other member that I know of as well.

And as I said, that is setting you up, of course, Mr. Secretary,

because of your previous record of competence, right? I particularly

am pleased with the testimony or the report. I just want to differentiate a couple of things.

Separating housing from homes. I understand the whole question

of maintenance and all that, and, as you well know, the military

housing project, of which you, again, can be justly proud of the legVerDate 22-MAR-2001 09:04 Sep 26, 2007 Jkt 033591 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\109-123\067030.000 HNS1 PsN: HNS1
21

islation which came from this committee and is now manifesting

itself, I differentiate between historic homes and housing.

In some respects, I could call the housing where the Army is concerned at Schofield Barracks, that was housing, the barracks there.

And I think we worked that with the whole barracks renewal in

almost a perfect way. We took barracks that—as I just the other

day saw, ‘‘From Here to Eternity,’’ again, the film, the barracks, as

shown in that picture more than a half century old, were the way

they were right virtually from the beginning until we did the whole

barracks renewal.

Now, we showed respect for the quadrangle, at Quadrangle D

where the planes came in. All that facade and the grounds have

been preserved, respectfully and truthfully. And at the same time

then, the barracks have been, not restored, but renewed in a way

that meets the most modern standards with regard to county codes,

earthquakes, et cetera.

So I do not have any problem with changing the definitions if you

agree that there is a difference between historic homes, such as we

have at Pearl Harbor, which may cost a good deal of money to restore and preserve and utilize, as opposed to housing, per se. If you

agree.

In reading your testimony, I take it that you were able to make

that differentiation under the President’s wording of existing legislation. Is that a correct statement?

Secretary GRONE. I believe that is a correct statement.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. That said then, I am interested then in

historic buildings versus merely old buildings, i.e., in my definition,

historic only in the sense they are still standing. And that is where

I think we may have a problem, and I am going to cite Fort Island.

You cite yourself in the testimony that Fort Island has a particular

emotional pull and historic value because of December 7.

But I tell you, not everything that is standing there is historic,

and we have had some real problems there right now. They are

just old. Old hangars are not historic. They are just old and still

standing. Shops and so on, we need to get rid of it, and I need to

figure out how to get that done.

Because if somebody is simply claiming they are historic,

architecturally, they have no distinction; aesthetically, they are, at

best, an eyesore; environmentally, they are a menace, they have no

practical value at all, none, zero, not even to do another film such

as was done out there at Pearl Harbor.

So I say Scoffield barracks versus Fort Island. I do not want to

get trapped. I know that there is an agreement there—oh, hell,

what is it called?

Mr. HEFLEY. Your time is almost up, Mr. Abercrombie. You had

better ask a question.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, the question has to do with this agreement that is cited in here—I forget the name of it—about historic

preservation. I have got really severe problems with that, because

I think that we are putting the Fort Island legislation, which,

again, you are very familiar with, in jeopardy, because we are expecting either those who are trying to put the air museum together, that kind of thing, or the developer that is working with

the Navy out there to get into expenditures that are totally unwarVerDate 22-MAR-2001 09:04 Sep 26, 2007 Jkt 033591 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\109-123\067030.000 HNS1 PsN: HNS1
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ranted, and there will be no practical or historic value to preserving a lot of these buildings.

So I hope we are not stuck on some kind of an agreement which

maybe avoided lawsuits from fanatics but I do not think contributes anything in the way of historic preservation; in fact, undermines and undercuts the ability of those of us who do care about

it.

Secretary GRONE. Mr. Abercrombie, I thank you for you earlier

remarks, and I will try not to disappoint in the answer to your

question.

When I last looked at the Fort Island question, and it was sometime ago, and I am happy to go back at it look at it again, I was

reasonably satisfied by the Navy, as we looked at that question,

that process of the agreements would not have deleterious effect or

significantly negative effect on the ability to proceed with the Fort

Island development. If there are other issues that have arisen since

then——

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, I will tell you what, since I used so

much time——

Secretary GRONE [continuing]. I would be happy to look at it.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. Why don’t we leave it at that, Mr.

Chairman.

If you would be willing to sit down, just take another look——

Secretary GRONE. Absolutely.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE [continuing]. Particularly with some of the

things that I think might be able to happen at Fort Island that will

benefit the Navy and the national security interests, I would be appreciative. I think it would be useful and helpful all the way

around. Thank you so much.

Secretary GRONE. Thank you, sir.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HEFLEY. Thank you, Mr. Abercrombie. Thank you for your

kind words as well. Gentlemen, I deferred my questions. We have

got a series of votes coming up, and I do not want to keep you

through that series, so we may submit to you some questions to

come back to us in writing.

But let me just ask this. As I mentioned earlier, the superintendent’s house, it sounds to me, first of all, like you have, kind of, a

handle on the routine historical thing. You have got a process to

deal with that.

But the exceptional ones, and let me refer back again to the superintendent’s house at West Point, $1 million to repair the roof.

Now, most Americans do not live in a $1 million home. And $6 million in additional repairs, probably, and an extremely small percentage of the American public live in a $7 million home.

You look at the—I think it was $3 million a few years ago when

we looked at the superintendent’s house at the Navy Academy, and

at the Air Force Academy, I do not know how much that is going

to be. They are talking about a lot of that. And down at the Navy

yard, they are talking about $300,000 just to study a mold problem;

not doing anything about it, just to study the mold problem. And

then they are talking maybe as much as $5 million to do some kind

of remediation.

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And so I guess what I am asking is, have you considered two

things? One is taking these kind of properties and changing their

use. Do not make them a home. Up at West Point, the superintendent has great affection for that home, and I understand why. It is

right there in the middle of things, and it has a history, and great

people have lived there and all that kind of thing.

But in talking with the cadets that I got to talk to while I was

there and talking with the graduates that I have had an opportunity to talk to, most of them told me they were never in that

home, they do not have any particular tie to it.

And so could that home could be made an alumni house or could

it be made something for entertainment or something, which would

not require, perhaps, the kind of renovation necessary for a place

that is going to be a home?

Certainly, down at the Navy yard the home we talked about, if

you made it something else other than a home, it would not require

that kind of expense.

So same thing at the Air Force Academy. I mean, the Air Force

Academy—at least at West Point, it is right there in the middle of

things. At the Air Force Academy, it is a lovely home, old ranch

house that has been added on to and so forth, but it is back in the

trees. I wonder if many cadets ever even see the thing. But it is

so nice, it is a wonderful home.

And, second, have you thought about changing the law to the extent that we could have alumni associations and so forth come in

and do the funding for these kind of homes?

Secretary GRONE. Mr. Chairman, I will be brief and then I will

yield to my colleagues for whatever comments they care to make

about specific projects.

I do believe it is important for us to keep our options open with

regard to end use of any asset. And we have done adaptive reuse

on some general officer and flag officer quarters over the years.

Whether we would in those cases or not, I think is still subject to

study as a class. I do not want to comment about them all specifically. So, yes, I mean, I think adaptive reuse is clearly an issue.

The underlying problem, however, on at least two of those three

cases that you mentioned are we are frankly digging ourselves out

of a hole that, in large measure, we created for ourselves.

And in the context of the United States Military Academy, the

life cycle, as I understand it, cost-to-benefit ratio of what is being

requested in relation to how old the existing roof truly is, I think,

is something that is worth looking at, that the total dollar amount

at any one time is, yes, it is a large bumper sticker, it is a large

number, but the fact of the matter is that we have not adequately

sustained those assets over time.

And I think a number of us are probably institutionally have a

role to play, for example, in the Tingey House question. We had an

opportunity to fully recapitalize the asset, the air conditioning and

all those systems. Folks looked at the bill, decided it was too big.

We did not do the HVAC system. Three, four years later, what do

we have? A large mold problem. So we are going to pay for it twice.

So the fundamental challenge is to get all of these assets into a

program of adequate sustainability over time while leaving our options open on the adaptive reuse question, as you mentioned.

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Secretary ARMBRUSTER. I might just comment on your question.

I share your concern, the Army does, in terms of the enormous cost

figure that was associated with that.

Several things. Yes, we are looking at alternative uses for that.

That is an option for us up there. But immediate concern is a safety issue with respect to the roof, and I am told that West Point is

submitting another work request for the roof and its support, and

that is coming up to the Army, and I am told the estimated cost

for that is somewhere around $500,000. So we do need to address

that, and we will be coming back to you for that particular need.

But also engaging with the graduates at West Point, the Congress has given us the authority to work in terms of private donations and the Association of Graduates that we believe are going

to step up and provide and assist in that regard.

So we have got a number of things working there. But the last

major renovation on the Soups House was back in 1961 to 1964.

We have not been very good in terms of maintaining that over the

sustainment piece. We have just got to do better on that.

So we are looking at a number of options, but you are absolutely right, that $7 million figure was indeed sobering and staggering.

We just simply have to do something other than accommodate to

that figure. So we are working a number of options.

Mr. HEFLEY. When you do these things, would you also look at

the possibility of building a new Soups House and using this for

something else? And any of these kind of buildings such as this. In

this particular case, I do not think, no matter what we put into it,

it is going to be a modern home for families to be raised in and

things like that, because it is just a wonderful old building, it really

is. I do not want to lose it, but——

Secretary ARMBRUSTER. The historic part, of course, is the original hospitality rooms that go back to the early part of the 19th century. And it has been added on to, so you have got over 16,000

square feet up there now that—you know, whether all of that needs

to survive is a question as well.

Mr. HEFLEY. Well, thank you very much. I have got to get to the

vote, but thank all of you, and we will submit some questions for

the record. And work with us on this, because we want to work

with you. We want to solve this problem in some way that will not

take away from housing that our young soldiers need, soldiers and

sailors and Marines, but at the same time preserve some of these

things that really need to be preserved.

And I am not suggesting we bulldoze any of the things I have

mentioned, but, golly, we have got to bring the cost under control.

And you are doing a good job of it. You came down $500,000 on the

roof just today. I appreciate that. The subcommittee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 3:22 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

A P P E N D I X

MARCH 8, 2006

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

MARCH 8, 2006

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE

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MARCH 8, 2006

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY DR. SNYDER

Dr. SNYDER. I do not understand the first phrase of it that talks about maintenance on a structural basis does appear to be more costly. What does the phrase,

‘‘structural basis,’’ mean?

General FLOCK. ‘‘Structural basis’’ refers to architectural features of buildings,

such as foundations, walls and roofs. Some of our very old buildings have unique

architectural features that appear to result in increased maintenance costs. For example, some of our general officer quarters have slate roofs. A slate roof will last

about 100 years as compared to an asphalt shingle roof (the kind of roofing material

sold at home center stores like Home Deport and Lowes) that will last about 20

years. Of the two, a slate roof is more expensive to install. However, when compared

to an asphalt shingle roof, the life-cycle costs are similar or less as it would be necessary to replace the slate roof once in 100 years whereas it would be necessary to

replace the asphalt shingle roof 5 times in 100 years. For buildings we intend to

keep, the ability to use the materials with the lowest life-cycle cost clearly makes

financial sense.

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. TAYLOR

Mr. TAYLOR. The Armed Forces Retirement Naval Home is a federal installation,

and so what is happening? What is the game plan? Because no one has articulated

it on behalf of the Administration what we are going to do to fix that facility.

Secretary GRONE. [The information was not available at the time of printing.]

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. JONES

Mr. JONES. General Flock, of the 7,000 homes that I believe you said, if I heard

it correctly, that are—I guess, 7,000 homes that are 50 years and older, being that

I have Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point down in my district, where are the majority

of these homes—and I know Camp Pendleton but where would the majority of those

homes be that—which base seems to have the largest number?

General FLOCK. Currently, the Marine Corps has about 7,400 buildings that are

over 50 years old. Of these, about 90 are family housing buildings that are mostly

located at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point (49 buildings) and Marine Corps

Base Hawaii (31 buildings). In ten years, an additional 7,150 buildings will turn 50

years old. Of these, about 1,200 are family housing buildings; about 50% are located

at Cherry Point and 30 percent at Hawaii. The majority of these family housing

buildings at these two locations will be demolished and replaced as a result of privatization efforts planned for the next two years.

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