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ge Are Told “Why
V
1500 Landowners Hear Sfennis, NASA Officials
When more than 1500 Hancock nnd Pearl River County landowners met at the Losrtown school Wednesday, Nov. 1, it brought to an end "the longest week in history”.
H. H. Shattiick, manager of Coast Electric, Bay St. Louis, said “from Monday to Wednesday has been two weeks, not two days.”
Shnttuck wm responsible for organizing and presiding over the meeting at which Senator John C. Stennis nnd numerous military nnd officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration appeared.
The first notice of the proposed base had hern published the previous Monday. Shnttuck nnd other business ami civic leaders in the area worked around the clock in preparation for the nicotine at which hundreds of questions about the missile testing lusc, acquisition of land and other items vital to the wel-fnre of the residents of the area were to be answered.
Virtually every resident of the affected area, officials and civic leaders from Hancock nnd neighboring counties crowded onto Logtown school's athletic field to hear the address by Senator Stennis, a member of the Space Committee and chairman of the Armed Forces Committee of the U. S. Senate. His nddress was followed by n two hour question nnd nnswer session with NASA and the Army Corps of Fngineer spokesmen.
A myrind of questions confronted the officials who utilized a flat-bed truck as a platform.
Here, briefly, are answers to the more pertinent questions asked at the Lop-town meeting:
1.	Corps of Engineers personnel will beein contacting families in the 13,500 acre sit area Monday (Nov. 6). They will begin surveying operations shortly afterward.
2.	Negotiations for land purchases in the site area will begin Feb. 16 and should be complete by June 1. The Corps of Engineers, wich will handle land acquisition, will operate from an office in Bay St. Louis.
3.	Construction of the mammoth test-ine will begin in mid-1!)G2. Contractors
the same way.
12.	Appraisers will be instructed to tnke into consideration the prospect that nearby land outside the buffer zone may rise spectacularly in value as a result of the space project.
13.	Funds received for homes purchased will not be subject to federal income taxes if the land owner buys another home within a year.
14.	Farming, raising of timber, drilling for oil and other uses of land will be permitted in the buffer zone.
16.	The plans were kept secret as lone as possible to keep land speculators from running up the price of properties involved.
Ifi. The government will pay for public facilities it condemns for the project .such as schools, highway* and utility systems. Buildings will not be nvnilable for use after testing begins. Cemeteries will not be affected, hut the government will remove them if the families request it.
17.	Hancock county school may be eligible for federal funds if the expected influx of population overcrowds existing facilities.
18.	About six miles of highway 43 lies within the buffer tone, and will be relocated. Tributary highways in either of the zones will also be relocated, as well as a short portion of U. S. Highway 00.
19.	Gainesville is the only town In the site area itself. Buffer zone towns or settlements arc Santa Rosa, Logtown, Westonia and Napoleon. Picayune will lie about a mile outside the northern buffer boundary. Kiln about a mile outside the eastern boundary and Pearling-t.on a short distance outside the southern boundary.