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Carrier to be based in Mayport

A nuclear-powered aircraft carrier will be based at Naval Station Mayport, Fla., Navy officials announced Monday.

“We have selected a preferred alternative, which is to homeport a CVN in Mayport,” Navy Secretary Donald Winter said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. “The principal rationale for that has to do with the vulnerability of the concentration [of carriers] we have right now in the Tidewater [Va.] area and the desirability to be able to have an additional resource for homeport operations and support.”

But the move will require at least $426 million and five years to complete before any carrier will call Mayport home.

“We do not anticipate having the required military construction completed until 2014,” said Lt. Sean Robertson, spokesman for the Navy at the Pentagon. “We will not homeport a nuclear carrier in Mayport until all the necessary infrastructure is in place.”

Robertson also confirmed that the carrier will be the only new ship sent to Mayport, saying that “there will be no additional surface ships in the move.”

The Navy has not determined which carrier might make the move to Mayport. Also up in the air is whether it would be an existing carrier or one yet to be built. That announcement will not come, Robertson said, until the process is much further along.

Winter broke the news first to Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., during a noon telephone call Monday, according to a news release from Martinez’s office.

The Navy presented 13 options for the future of the base when it released its draft environmental impact study in March. The final version of that report — including the Navy’s preferred option — will be released Friday and will include the Navy’s official recommendation.

Martinez’s release says the carrier will bring 3,190 more military personnel to Mayport.

Mayport’s former carrier, the conventionally powered John F. Kennedy, was decommissioned in March 2007.