11:04 AM CDT on Friday, July 8, 2005

From 11 News Staff Reports

The fight to keep the 147th Fighter Wing as protection for the Houston area heated up a notch Thursday, especially after the terrorist attacks in London.

The F-16's used by the Texas Air National Guard group based at Ellington Field are set to be retired and not replaced.

Thursday area leaders made their case to save the 147th to the man in charge of base realignment and closure.

If 15 F-16 fighter jets are eliminated from Ellington Field, the nation would be more vulnerable to a terrorist attack on the economy's second most important piece of real estate -- the petrochemical industry, Houston Mayor Bill White said Thursday.

"The 147th protects the entire Gulf Coast," DeLay said. "Its F-16s protect the Houston region, its massive population, its vulnerable port and other critical strategic assets." The Port of Houston, which helps service a $15 billion petrochemical complex, could be placed in jeopardy without the fighter jets, DeLay and others said.

More than 300 plants line the Houston Ship Channel's banks. Chemical plants stretch along Texas' coast from Corpus Christi to Beaumont. "To date, we are a hard target," Ellington Field Task Force Director John Martinec said. "You lessen that and we become a soft target."

Martinec said when a terrorist attack is under way, seconds count. He said it could take as long as an hour for fighter jets to reach Houston from another base. And those pilots, he said, wouldn't necessarily be familiar with the area's potential targets, which include the chemical plants, the Texas Medical Center, NASA's Johnson Space Center, a nuclear power plant in South Texas and a biocontainment lab in Galveston.

The Base Realignment and Closure Commissioner toured Ellington Field Thursday with Mayor Bill White and Congressman Tom DeLay.

Hansen said the plea in Houston wasn't dissimilar from what he has heard during other community visits, but he said removing the fighter jets could have an "effect on all 50 states and perhaps worldwide if this isn't protected."

"I was very impressed by the ideas that were brought forward," he said of his closed-door meeting with DeLay, White and leaders of the fighter jet unit. Those who attended the meeting met with the public and media afterward.

DeLay said defending a state that is larger than Spain, France, Japan or Italy and home to 21 million people, "is logistically untenable without the necessary resources -- resources that I believe should be housed here at Ellington."

DeLay argued it's critical for the fourth largest city in the world with one of the world's largest petrochemical complexes and a major port to have the highest level of security.

"Homeland Security starts at home and Houston can't afford to be left undefended," said DeLay.

In a few days, there will be a regional BRAC meeting in San Antonio to discuss which bases should close.

BRAC officials will send their final report to the White House, where President Bush will make his decision by the end of September.