ECONOMIC WOES: EAKER AFB AMONG 43 THAT MIGHT CLOSE

CAPE GIRARDEAU -- The announced closing of Eaker Air Force Base in Blytheville, Ark., will feed the "tiger" of unemployment and other socioeconomic problems that repress nearby areas in Dunklin and Pemiscot counties, an economic development official said.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney is recommending the closure of the base, show documents obtained Friday by the Associated Press. The base, previously known as Blytheville Air Force Base, opened in 1942.

Altogether Cheney is recommending the closure of 31 major domestic military bases and 12 minor installations, as well as the realignment of 28 others.

"By 1995, the number of people in the U.S. military will be about one-fourth smaller than it is today," Cheney said in a statement. "Smaller forces need fewer bases. It's as simple as that."

Dan Bollinger, executive director of the Bootheel Regional Planning and Economic Development Commission in Malden, said closing the base would have a substantial economic impact on the lower halves of Dunklin and Pemiscot counties. Among the cities affected, he said, will be Caruthersville, Steele, Hayti, Kennett, Senath, and Hornersville.

A substantial number of area residents work at Eaker and money from the base is spent in those communities, he said.

"Pemiscot County particularly, and Dunklin County, too, have some of the worst socioeconomic numbers in the state of Missouri, and that's in relation to the number of jobs, unemployment rate, per capita income, family income," said Bollinger. "Any loss of jobs in that area feeds that tiger."

Figures showing the number of area residents who would lose jobs under Cheney's recommendation were unavailable from Bollinger. But Bollinger said the executive director of the Pemiscot County Chamber of Commerce, Mark Dawson, has numbers on how many county residents work at the base.

The numbers were compiled by Dawson when the base was slated for closing a couple of years ago, but was later kept open following a public hearing, he said. They also detail the broad economic effect that the base's closing would have, said Bollinger.

Dawson could not be reached Friday at the chamber's office and an office spokesperson said she did not have the figures. Similar figures were unavailable from Kennett Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Jim Baker.

Bollinger said his feeling over the announcement of the base closing could be likened to the old saying: "A recession is when your neighbor is out of work and a depression is when you're out of work."

"This is pretty far removed from me personally, but it does upset me, bother me," he said.

Baker said closing Eaker would have a considerable impact on Kennett, which has both residents who work there and military retirees who use the base for services.

"I just don't know (how) you could put a dollar value on it. We feel it's valuable to us, not only from an economic standpoint but also a strategic standpoint. It is a B-52 (bomber) base and currently they have no bombers to take the place of the B-52."

The chamber will work with Blytheville to fight the planned closing, just as it has in the past, Baker vowed.

Baker said figures he has seen through the office of U.S. Sen. David Pryor, D-Ark., show that the cost of closing the base would be so high that it would take a minimum of 15 years for the government to break even. And some estimates from the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, he said, show that may never happen.

"The cost to close that base would be tremendous," he said. "There's much more to it than locking the door."

The costs would include maintenance of certain facilities required under closure laws, he said.

The estimated cost of closing all the facilities is $5.7 billion from fiscal 1992 to fiscal 1997 while the savings will amount to about $6.5 billion. That means a net gain of $850 million, the Pentagon said.

(Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press.)