Obituaries for the late Senator Robert Byrd remarked upon many things. These included his uncanny ability to deliver vast piles of Federal dollars to his home state of West Virginia. One can debate whether that’s a positive attribute or a negative, but either way it is hard to dispute that Sen. Byrd excelled at this fine art. Many obituaries compiled long lists of goodies he delivered to the folks back home. But a particularly brazen instance involved a Coast Guard facility moved to his landlocked home state.
The salient point to consider is that West Virginia does not have a coastline. Notice its placement. Twelve Mile Circle does have a fairly sizable international audience so I don’t want to assume this is an obvious point. Hopefully this doesn’t come across as patronizing. It’s not meant that way.
The Coast Guard does have homeports located inland. Primarily those exist within the Great Lakes region and along major branches of the Mississippi River watershed. They even operate a Marine Safety Unit in Huntington, West Virginia, with responsibility for a stretch of the Ohio River.
A Bit More Extreme
However, that’s not what the obituaries were talking about. They were considering something much more landlocked, much more inexplicable, and much more unusual; the Coast Guard facilities near Martinsburg.
So I suppose it would be possible from a theoretical perspective to paddle down the little creek in Martinsburg towards the Potomac River. Then someone could head downstream towards the Chesapeake Bay and onward to the Atlantic Ocean. The Great Falls of the Potomac River might be a bit problematic. Nonetheless, portage around that and someone could reach the coast from Martinsburg at least by kayak.
There are at several Coast Guard centers in Martinsburg (or nearby Kearneysville) and I uncovered four of them with a little time on the search engines. They’re not as easy to find as one might imagine. The Coast Guard is part of the Department of Homeland Security. Apparently they seem a bit reluctant to advertise their facilities although they do leave behind enough breadcrumbs to identify them. These include the Operations Systems Center, the National Maritime Center, the National Vessel Movement Center and the National Vessel Documentation Center.
A Closer Look
The Coast Guard’s Operations Systems Division “develops, fields, maintains and provides user support for Coast Guard enterprise information systems…” They’re located, appropriately enough, on Coast Guard Drive. They get double-points, by the way, since Coast Guard Drive serves as the boundary between Berkeley and Jefferson Counties.
The National Maritime Center opened its new facility in Martinsburg in January 2008. As they describe themselves, “the NMC is like a national Division of Motor Vehicles, but instead of licensing motorists, the NMC is licensing and credentialing Merchant Mariners.”
As I investigated the situation further it dawned on me that these are not activities that require access to a coastline. Developing information systems? Licensing Merchant Mariners? These seem geographically independent to me. I’ll let other debate the merits of whether they should be performed in West Virginia. I could certainly see taxpayer savings since just about everything is cheaper away from the cities. But that’s true whether it’s West Virginia or just about any other rural locale.
The reality of these functions certainly don’t align with the negative headlines generated by the media. Coast Guard in West Virginia? — seems fine to me.
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