PCEOC is going to have a presence at these meetings - We can use these meetings to keep getting more people aware of what the Pentagon is trying to do to the very country it is supposed to protect.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
New call for Pinon Canyon impact angers area ranchers
By PETER ROPER THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
May 08, 2008 02:16 am
In the long standoff between Fort Carson planners and the ranchers trying to stop the Army's expansion of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site, it doesn't take much to set off the general alarm that the other side is up to something.
On Wednesday, the Army filed a notice in the Federal Register announcing that Fort Carson would do yet another environmental impact study based on the Pentagon's decision to put a fifth infantry brigade (4,500 troops) at the Mountain Post. That is in addition to the four brigades of the 4th Infantry Division that will be based there.
The notice said the study would also look at bringing a Combat Aviation Brigade, meaning helicopters and 2,800 more soldiers, to the post. The study will evaluate the impact of more troops and their training needs on the current Fort Carson and the 238,000-acre Pinon Canyon training area northeast of Trinidad.
"The decision to put additional brigades at Fort Carson is part of the overall plan to increase the size of the Army, and not a decision made by Fort Carson," a spokesman emphasized Wednesday afternoon. Congress has ordered the Army to grow by another 65,000 troops for the war on terror.
Even so, ranchers fighting the Army's plan to increase the Pinon Canyon training area by 414,000 acres see the Pentagon's decision to put more troops at the Mountain Post as deliberate pressure on Congress to authorize the expansion. Mack Louden, a rancher and board member of the Not 1 More Acre coalition, said the Army has already done a "transition" environmental study looking at the impact of putting more troops at Fort Carson - a study the coalition is challenging in federal court.
Now opponents will have to muster forces to oppose this new study as well, he said.
"This incoherent set of policies is being used to grind down the people of Southeastern Colorado whose lives would be ruined by the Pentagon's plans for the region," he said in a statement Wednesday.
Tom Warren, Fort Carson's deputy garrison commander in charge of the Pinon Canyon project, said the latest study is required by law and will not evaluate any expansion of Pinon Canyon.
"The initiative (to expand the Army) requires site-specific environmental studies and Fort Carson is one of the sites selected for one of these new brigades," he said. It will look at a broad range of impacts on the current Fort Carson and Pinon Canyon area and make recommendations on needed infrastructure.
Which means it is likely to bolster the Army's argument that basing more troops at Fort Carson means more training land is needed at Pinon Canyon.
"The Army is on the record that we need more training acreage at Pinon Canyon," Warren acknowledged.
Opponents bristle at that, pointing to a 2005 report from the federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission that said Fort Carson could accommodate more troops without expanding Pinon Canyon. A month ago, the Not 1 More Acre group filed a lawsuit in federal court in Denver to force the Army to go back and re-do the "transitional" environmental study it completed in 2006. It's a lawsuit they hope will help derail the Army's expansion effort.
"And yet here comes the Army again, piling on another piece-meal process to further obscure its true goals from the people," said Jim Herrell, a board member of the coalition.
FORT CARSON MEETINGS:
As part of the new environmental report, officials are conducting three public meetings this month. Each will be from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Dates and locations are as follows:
- May 20: Trinidad State Junior College, Sullivan Student Center, 600 Prospect, Trinidad.
- May 21: Crown Plaza Hotel, 2886 South Circle Drive, Colorado Springs.
- May 22: Otero Junior College, Student Center, 1802 Colorado Ave., La Junta.
