Pinon Canyon

Just about a year ago I wrote about the Army’s proposed Pinon Canyon expansion and the jist of it was willing seller-willing buyer. Shortly after that Senator Salazar proposed and got a one year time-out where no negotiations, no environmental studies and no one in the Army could discuss plans, needs or desires. The year is up, the report has been released and hopefully Senator Salazar won’t get the additional year’s moratorium he has been making noises about.
           
I had the privilege of attending a briefing with Assistant Secretary of the Army Keith Eastman the day after the report was released and he filled in a lot details. The big news was, of course, that 100,000 acres would work when 418,000 had been the advertised number. 418 is still the number they would like and some of that factors into the fact the Army needs 3 million acres nationwide of additional training ground. The 100,000 does give them enough for a new state of the art live-fire range, and if you look at Las Animas County you see the identified parcels are adjacent to the existing training ground and bordered by county roads, and the bulk of it is controlled by one person.
           
Just as significant was the news that eminent domain would not be used, protecting one of our most basic property rights. Of major importance to the local businesses and municipalities would be about 140 million in new construction and 100 or so new permanent jobs. The impact would be an additional 5 million in payroll to what is currently a 9 million dollar total payroll for all employment in Las Animas County.
           
Another question that was to be answered was where else could the training take place. The Army is aware of the fact the majority of their soldiers are married, facing multiple deployments and sending them out of state for lengthy training missions not only would be hard on morale with all the accompanying problems but the expense of transportation would be horrendous. For primarily those reasons, the Army set up a 200 mile travel zone for any additional training area and found nothing suitable. There are other large training bases around the country that may come to mind but they are receiving new troops also putting additional strain on their training areas.
           
So where to from here? The Army does not have the funds to begin writing checks even if they were come to terms with willing sellers in the next few days. Congress has to appropriate money in 2010, 11 and 12 to make this all come together. We believe they will, we believe agreements will be reached with willing sellers, we believe the local economy in southern Colorado will benefit and we know American Soldiers will be trained the best they can be to insure their safety as they protect America.

CONTACT THE WRITER • HISEY4CD4@MSN.COM

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