PCEOC SUPPORTERS: YOUR PRESENCE IS NEEDED

Senator Udall will hold town meetings in Trinidad and La Junta this week. 

The Trinidad meeting is Thursday Jan. 9th 4-5 PM at TSJC - in the Pioneer Room of the Student Center.  The La Junta meeting is Friday the 13^th- in the Student Center Banquet Room, OJC, from 1-2pm.

The PCEOC board feels it is important to have a strong showing at these meetings.  We realize that PCMS expansion has been played down recently but several events make the Army's intentions clear:

1) Contrary to custom our spending ban had to be "re-inserted" into the military construction bill by the committee chairman this summer,

2) The Army recently tried again to change the name of PCMS to Ft. Carson South, and

3) The Army refuses to rescind the waiver granted by the Department of Defense to allow land acquisition at PCMS.

Most recently the Army released an Environmental Assessment (EA) for the Combat Aviation Brigade(CAB) scheduled to move to Ft. Carson.  This is important since the EA proposes CAB training at PCMS.  Originally the Army said the CAB would train predominantly at Ft. Carson.  CAB training at PCMS will entail an additional 20,000 hours of flight training over the entire SE Colorado region. 

Flights over SE Colorado will include low-level and Nap-of-the-Earth (NOE) training. NOE is defined as:     "flight conducted at varying airspeeds as close to the earth's surface as vegetation and obstacles permit".  In many cases this may mean flights under 300 feet.    Numerous courts have ruled in conformity with the 1946 Supreme Court decision that the hyper-adjacent airspace (under 500') belongs to the land and to the landowner.  If the Army creates these low fly ways they could have legal standing to maintain them even if that means curtailing wind development on private lands in SE Colorado.

We must let Senator Udall know that SE Colorado citizens deserve their property rights, including hyper-adjacent airspace, and that we are opposed to expansion of Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site by any means: Air or Ground.

YOUR COMMENTS ARE NEEDED:

PUBLIC COMMENT MEETINGS ARE SCHEDULED FOR 6 to 8 pm EACH EVENING:

January 23^rd at TSJC in Trinidad

January 24^th at Otero JR College in La Junta

January 25^th at Crown Plaza in Colorado Springs

Fort Drum in NY has CAB with drones now.

Fort Riley in KS has a CAB and will receive drones in March.

So, if Fort Carson gets a CAB, the drones will likely follow- BUT the EA does not mention drones in its assessment.

• The overall cost of the CAB is estimated to be in excess of $4 billion. Over $700 million of that is for construction at Fort Carson. The rest is for all the helicopters, drones and ground support vehicles, etc.
• In a time of massive budget crisis and cuts in general and in the Pentagon in particular, how does this make sense? What are the priorities of our congressional folks who are pushing this?