BRAC leaves herd of white deer in peril
The 1990s-era Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) set out to get rid of hundreds of military bases around the country made surplus by the sudden outbreak of peace as a result of the end of the 1948-1989 Cold War. Their findings, controversial and often pshaw’d by Congress in the interest of keeping the pork firmly in the barrel, caught up both old and new bases alike.
Personally, I watched locally as Pascagoula Naval Station, originally built in the 80s to house a Battleship Surface Action Group and never fully used for that, was shuttered. That base is now about 90 percent vacant, only housing a small Coast Guard unit that docks a 210-foot cutter at a pier built, literally, for a battleship. Other bases, like Fort McClellan in Alabama, were transferred to the National Guard.
Then there are places like Seneca Army Depot in New York.
Built in WWII as a munitions storage facility, it served in the Manhattan Project and later was used as a disposal site for old ammo. BRAC targeted Seneca in 1995 and it was closed in 2000. Now, with its base housing sold off, the rest of the installation is seldom used. The Army Corps of Engineers plans to leave its 7,000-acres of woodlands, dotted with large, concrete igloos, unmaintained after 2016.
This has the ultimate fate of the 200 white deer, the largest herd of wild albino deer in the world, uncertain.
