Portsmouth shipyard payrolls rose in 2004

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. – Both civilian and military payrolls at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard rose significantly last year, a lobby fighting to save the yard says.

The civilian payroll was $318 million, up 12 percent from $284 million in 2003, the Seacoast Shipyard Association said Thursday.

The much smaller military payroll rose 83 percent, from $16 million to $29.3 million. That reflected the Coast Guard’s decision to make the yard the home port for several cutters.

The yard, a major employer in eastern New Hampshire and southern Maine, specializes in maintaining and overhauling nuclear submarines for the Navy.

The Pentagon has proposed another round of military base closings as part of a continuing drive to eliminate duplicative bases and turn work over to contractors.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld must recommend a list of bases for closure or downsizing to a special commission by mid-May, and the yard’s supporters are fighting to keep Portsmouth off it.

“If you’re on that list, you’re dead,” retired Navy Capt. William McDonough, head of the association, said at a briefing Thursday.

Portsmouth is one of four shipyards in the country left after previous base closings that are capable of overhauling the Navy’s nuclear submarines.

Peak civilian employment at the yard last year was 4,803.

In New Hampshire, yard workers are concentrated in Rochester, Dover, Portsmouth and Somersworth, McDonough said.

In Maine, they are concentrated in the Sanford-Springvale area, Kittery and Kittery Point, South Berwick and Eliot, he said.