CAMDEN — Camden County is at the top of the Navy's list of potential sites for a controversial pilot training field, the chairmen of the Currituck and Camden commissions warned residents here Wednesday night.

Both Barry Nelms and Jerry Jennings made the announcement — denied by a U.S. Navy spokesman — in the Camden High School cafeteria following a closed session meeting attended by Camden and Currituck commissioners and a Raleigh attorney.

The attorney, Thomas R. West, of the law firm Poyner and Spruill, has been requesting documents from the state of North Carolina to prepare for the legal fight with the Navy over its proposed outlying landing field. Both counties are paying the firm to prevent the Navy from picking the Hale's Lake site in Camden for the OLF, where pilots would train for carrier missions.

"In the last couple of months I've had privilege to a lot of information that was generated by the state of North Carolina, and recently, in the last few months, it's become very clear that Camden has been singled out (for an OLF)," Nelms, chairman of the Currituck commission, told the crowd of slightly more than 100 in the school cafeteria.

Nelms said the Hale's Lake site is attractive to the Navy because of its close proximity to Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Va., which could significantly save on fuel costs. He also said it would be much cheaper for the Navy to open a new OLF in Camden than shell out hundreds of millions of dollars being demanded in lawsuits filed by Virginia Beach residents over jet noise.

Jennings concurred with Nelms, saying residents had better pace themselves for lengthy legal battle.

"This is going to be a slow burn, and right now, we are a turtle, not a rabbit," Jennings said. "So we don't need to burn ourselves out, because we've got a long, hard fight (ahead of us). ... Keep the heat on our political people in Washington and Raleigh."

Navy spokesman Ted Brown said Thursday morning that it is not true that Camden ranks ahead of any of the other four sites that the Navy is studying for the OLF.

"At this point we have no preferred alternative. We are looking at all five sites equally in the environmental impact (study)," Brown said.

But residents attending Wednesday's meeting expressed little trust in the Navy, saying they've heard or read conflicting statements about the OLF proposal.

For example, Troy Breathwaite said Navy literature states that the Sandbanks site being studied in Gates County is 72 miles from Naval Air Station Oceana, when it actually is only 55 miles in a straight-line distance from the air station. He said the Navy's estimate of the straight-line, 26-mile distance between Oceana and the Hale's Lake site is accurate.

"Honestly, from looking at the data, I've very concerned that this (Hale's Lake) is a site that is standing out (for a Navy OLF) for a number of reasons," he said.

Moyock resident Jack Lilienthal said a Navy official told him at a recent OLF "scoping" meeting that the airfield would not poison water fowl, only nuisance birds. However, a Navy official at another scoping meeting told him the OLF wouldn't poison any birds, he said.

"It appears that one hand does not know what the other is doing," Lilienthal said.

Pasquotank resident Bill Lehmann, a former pilot, said if the OLF comes to Camden, Navy jets would be flying at 1,800 feet or less over the largest school complex in the county, affecting 2,500 students and faculty. He said a staff member at Elizabeth City Middle School told him that students have a hard time concentrating when the lawn is being mowed.

"I said, 'Well, you can imagine what it is like when you have 32,000 F-18s going over the top of you?'" Lehmann said.

Elizabeth City resident Rosie Hale said a recent "60 Minutes" program has led her to question why the Navy couldn't build an island for the OLF.

"Put the OLF out there, and then when they are sick of training on it, they can build condominiums, and people can go live on that island," she said.

Navy spokesman Brown said developing an island for an OLF would be "incredibly costly," and involve "fairly significant" environmental impacts.

Camden County Manager Randell Woodruff said residents need to continue to make their opposition to the OLF known over the next year.

He said June 7 is the cutoff date for the public to raise questions and concerns for the Navy as part of the scoping process. It will be another year before the Navy again receives public comment on the project.

"We've got to keep it on the front-burner," Woodruff said. "This (OLF) is the equivalent of a hurricane coming from out in the ocean coming toward us."