What if Fairchild orphans Spokane?

In an investment both patriotic and shrewd, Spokane business leaders and private citizens donated land worth more than $125,000 to the U.S. War Department in 1942 for part of an Army Air Depot we now know as Fairchild Air Force Base.

When the latest Base Realignment and Closure Commission submits its hit list to Congress on May 16, Spokane will learn if it might soon get that land back.

State and local bigwigs express optimism that Fairchild will escape the ax – and maybe even pick up new missions from less-fortunate bases. The sunny smiles of those backers draw on several rays of hope:

Fairchild is the largest refueling base in the Air Force. It has enjoyed strong community support since before its inception. Its Air Force Survival School fulfills a critical mission (bases in Alaska and Florida specialize in cold-weather and water survival, respectively, but our instructors teach the entire survival curriculum). An ease of force projection will help facilities in coastal states avoid closure. It’s simply faster and cheaper to launch global missions from here than, say, Kansas.

But our base isn’t a lock to avoid mothballs. In 1993 – albeit when the selection process was thought to be more political – the commission briefly added Fairchild to the closure list. And let’s face it, Spokane is about as far inland as a “coastal” base can get. Plus, no matter how conservative this area is, Washington remains a Democratic state in a nation governed by Republicans who rarely miss an opportunity to reward supporters and punish enemies.

More potentially bad news: Fairchild lost its last bomber mission in 1994, and it might be easier for the commission to shutter a support base. As for the survival school, it would be difficult – but not impossible – to relocate. The odds in favor of Fairchild are still good, but up to 24 percent of the nation’s 400-plus bases may face closure. Targeting Spokane could be one of many hard choices the commission feels forced to make.

So what will happen if we lose Fairchild? We’ll watch an estimated $1 billion in annual economic activity fly away as the area’s largest employer shuts down. And although we’ll get the land back – eventually – there’s no short-term redevelopment plan to fill that economic hole. Unless we preserve the base as a film location and attract a new Hollywood production every few weeks. Quick, someone call Cuba Gooding Jr.

Anyone who thinks we could just turn those 6.5 square miles into a hotbed of industry should follow the Hard 7 blog link to this week’s L.A. Times story detailing the long handover delays many base communities endure. Before anything new can be built, the military is supposed to clean up its environmental messes. But those efforts are as slow as they are underfunded.

“In almost every case, it has taken military services far longer than expected to clean up pollution at the facilities and turn the land over to local communities for redevelopment,” the Times reported.

The EPA already has identified 39 “areas of concern” at Fairchild, some quite serious. You don’t need a crystal ball to see that redeveloping the base could take decades. And if the military walks away from those pollution problems, we’ll long for the days when BNSF posed the biggest threat to the local environment.

So let’s hope the feds decide to hang onto that land we gave them in 1942. We just can’t afford to take it back.