“In order to support Fort Carson–based soldiers, other federal lands must not only be suitable and available, they must also be within 200 miles of Fort Carson/PCMS,” Foster says. “If the federal lands are further away than 200 miles, the burden on soldiers and families to use the land regularly for home-station readiness training purposes becomes so great that the Army would be forced to consider re-aligning units away from Fort Carson and to other installations with closer facilities.” He adds, “There are a handful of federal landholdings…that the Army is investigating further, [but] none of these are assured or problem-free. Securing permission from other federal agencies to train on these lands is a lengthy and difficult process.” In other words, it’s easier to take property from private owners than it is to use land held by other branches of the government.
Louden’s response: “Yeah, it’s convenient for them. The generals can fly down, observe training and maneuvers, and fly back to Colorado Springs in time to play golf in the afternoon.” Spit.
‘The bureaucracy has a power all its own.’
The insurgency against the expansion sprang up almost immediately after word of the plan became public in 2006. Piñon Canyon also includes portions of the historic Santa Fe Trail, and a number of dinosaur fossils and footprints have been found in the area. So the opposition has grown into a broad coalition of ranchers, archaeologists, paleontologists, tribal leaders, and business owners. The landscape here is at once rugged and fragile, supporting only plants with shallow root systems. These patchy, protein-rich short grasses keep herds fed in the winter, and they’re interspersed with rugged scrub and easily damaged rocky flatland given to dust storms. Even today, the ruts made by wagons traveling the Santa Fe Trail more than a century ago are plainly visible in the flats. Imagine what a 67-ton Abrams tank or an 18-ton Stryker combat vehicle on maneuvers can do, not to mention the impact of live-fire exercises in a place where lightning sparks grassfires that burn hundreds of acres at a go.
The Army initially planned to seize the extra land through eminent domain, according to Army study documents, as it did back in the 1980s. It would be on firm legal ground, since national defense is a clear “public use,” as required by the Fifth Amendment. But since many Colorado ranchers had been down this road before, they mobilized immediately. Among other tactics, they have used demands for studies of the project’s environmental and historical impact to hold it up both in the Army’s own processes and through the courts.
Steve Wooten has a ranch a quarter mile away from land the Army wants. In 2007 he started coordinating an effort to make an ecological, biological, and historical assessment of properties that have mostly been off-limits to surveyors. “Nothing of this extent has ever been done because no one ever had access to these lands but their owners,” Wooten says. “We’re getting teams of experts in here to conduct these surveys and submit them as evidence of the impact the PCMS expansion would have.” Meanwhile, Not 1 More Acre! halted the construction of a 16-barrack military base on the western edge of the existing training site with an April 2008 lawsuit charging that the Army was violating the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 by failing to make the required environmental, cultural, and economic impact statements. The Army is appealing a federal judge’s ruling in the group’s favor.
Anti-expansion activists also have lobbied their local, state, and federal representatives. Municipal and county governments throughout the area, with the exception of Trinidad itself, have passed resolutions against the expansion, and so has the state legislature. In 2007 opponents won their biggest victory so far: Reps. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.) and John Salazar (D-Colo.) pushed through a one-year congressional ban on funding for eminent domain acquisitions or expansion activities in Piñon Canyon. Last year Congress extended the ban through the end of fiscal 2009.
But Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), whose district includes Colorado Springs, supports the expansion. Lamborn led an effort to let the Army circumvent the spending ban by attaching language to the 2009 Defense Authorization Act that allowed the solicitation of “willing sellers.” Although the amendment was not successful, the Army says it still reserves the right to solicit sales.
Keith Eastin, assistant secretary of the Army for installations and environment, has said the Army is speaking to some potential sellers. But despite repeated inquiries from members of Congress, the buyer hasn’t revealed who these landowners are. “The Army believes it can buy the land it needs from willing sellers,” Foster, the Army spokesman, says. “The Army has no desire to assert its condemnation authority, does not feel such authority is needed in this case, and seeks only the ability to buy on the open real estate market like any other organization.”
Opponents say that’s an end run around the funding ban’s intent. They say the Army’s aim is a checkerboard land grab that would make acquisition of other desired parcels inevitable by devaluing them. Live-fire war games among armored units and demands for access easements tend to drive down land values, not to mention spook cattle. Army land purchases also could intimidate holdouts, who will worry that they won’t get as much in compensation should eminent domain come later.
Many smaller ranchers also worry that there would be less political opposition to eminent domain proceedings against the remaining holdouts if the Army got halfway to its goal by soliciting or strong-arming other owners.
“For the past two years I’ve worked on preventing the Army from spending any money on the expansion,” Rep. Musgrave says. “But they are very tenacious. They have time and all the things government has on their side.” What about soliciting willing sellers? “I’m so tired of anyone saying if you have a willing seller it shouldn’t be a problem,” Musgrave says. “First, they have not found one. Second, everyone else’s property rights are at risk from eminent domain once the Army starts getting a parcel here or there. They just never stop. The bureaucracy has a power all its own.”
‘There’s no compromise that can be made.’
A new twist came in September 2008, when the Army backtracked and said it only needed 100,000 acres of the 418,000 it initially sought and formally announced. For now. The reasons cited were vague. “Land acquisition resources are not unlimited; the Army has other land acquisition efforts it needs and wants to pursue at other locations,” Foster says, carefully sidestepping the question of whether the Army is moving toward its goal one phase at a time.
Yet even the full 418,000 acres might not be the end of the story. According to a 2004 policy document prepared by Fort Carson entitled “Analysis of Alternatives Study: Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, Colorado,” the Pentagon has been seeking since at least 2004 to acquire 7 million total acres in southeastern Colorado, stretching all the way down to New Mexico. Such an acquisition would displace 17,000 residents and create a military reservation larger than Massachusetts.
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