Norco Base Is Facing Closure Issues

If the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Norco is closed by the Pentagon in November, Patty Pfouts will have a long haul ahead of her.

The military has proposed moving the weapons research facility to the Naval Air Weapons Station at Point Mugu in Ventura County, and the 42-year-old Norco native said she can’t afford to move her family. So she’ll have to commute 230 miles a day.

“I just can’t afford not to,” she says.

Pfouts is one of the 1,800 workers whose paychecks depend on Naval Surface Warfare Center Corona Division, locally known as “Norco,” for the small equestrian town in which it resides.

Norco is one of 62 communities nationwide -- including 25 in California -- that are starting to grapple with the changes a closure can bring, even as they lobby to keep their bases open. When it appeared in May on the list of sites recommended for relocation in the current round of military downsizing, it wasn’t the first time. Ten years ago, during the last major round of post-Cold War closures, the base was on the list.

Although the closure is not definite, the employees, scientists and engineers who test the value and efficiency of weapons before the Navy purchases them in bulk have been through this before.

Pfouts, an engineering technician, is one. She is a 19-year employee of Computer Services Corp., a contracted electronics services company involved in nearly every division of the base. The company has about 300 employees at Norco.

Pfouts said her husband already makes a 45-minute commute to the City of Industry, where he is a warehouse manager, and her two college-age children live at home and attend area schools. She wouldn’t want to make any of them move to Ventura County, even if she could afford the higher housing prices.

“My other daughter lives in Riverside with my grandchild and another one on the way; I’m not going to move away from them,” she said.

Karen Curp, 50, has spent 16 years at the company, living one block from the base. She said the housing market in Ventura County is out of reach for her family. The current median price of a home in Riverside County is $393,000, and the Ventura County median is $584,000.

“I can’t afford to move. It’s just too expensive. My husband has a job here, and he obviously makes more than me. I have a kid in college and another in school, and I can’t move them either,” she said.

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) has been working behind the scenes in Washington to keep the base active.

“Especially now in a time of war, it is not the right thing to do,” Calvert said. “Plus, in my mind, it’s a recommendation that’s trying to fix a problem that does not exist. It’s the least cost-saving of all the [recommended closures] in the country.”

According to the Navy’s estimates, closing the base would save about $400,000 over 20 years. The facilities at Norco were upgraded 10 years ago, and Calvert and Norco base proponents say that the Point Mugu site has nothing comparable, requiring the building of a weapons analysis site at a minimum cost of $40 million.

“So, it’s actually going to cost them money to move the base,” Calvert said. “If it doesn’t save money and it doesn’t help the national defense of the country, why do it?”

Roberta Spieler, spokeswoman for the Norco base, said the base’s position is steadfast: “We’re dedicated to follow through the [realignment and closure] process .... That’s what we’re about right now.”

Many employees, however, are reluctant. Most have spent their careers at the Norco base, which the Navy purchased the day before Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941.

Even newcomers, such as Mary Koster, 43, of Norco, a computer programmer who has been at the base for 1 1/2 years, are feeling the pressure.

“It’s an awesome team of people,” Koster said, “almost like a family. It’d be great to keep it here. I’ve worked [other jobs] for 20 years, and I don’t think I’ve ever had such a good job with nice people.”

Some Norco employees would willingly move to the larger naval base at Point Mugu.

Chester Franklin, 71, an 11-year Norco systems engineer with Computer Services Corp., said he would relocate, family and all. “I have changed jobs a lot, and I have moved a lot,” he said. “Sometimes you just have to do it.”

Franklin said the job itself was important: “I like what I do. The function of it is important, and the job is needed.”