The Biggest Army Land-grab since the Indian Wars

In the 1860s the U.S. Army took Southeastern Colorado away from the Cheyenne people, relocating them to reservations in Oklahoma and prison camps in Florida. Now the Army is planning another big land-grab.  They are planning to expand the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site in southeastern Colorado to gigantic proportions by seizing the entire southeastern corner of Colorado, from just east of I-25, all the way to the Kansas and Oklahoma borders. Army officials deny that they have decided on a plan, but in this email I have included links to Army documents that indicate that such a plan has been in place for years.  If it is actualized, Pinon Canyon would displace thousands of citizens. There are 1,928 farms and ranches in Las Animas, Baca, Bent and Otero counties that generate $270 million a year to the state's economy. These ranch-lands, some of which have been family owned for over a century would become the largest live-fire site in the country.

• So far, the Army has been unwilling to inform the public of their plans, claiming that nothing has yet been officially proposed.  They have none-the-less been talking with landowners and developing a list of willing sellers.

• In 1983 when the Army first established the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site, it promised residents of Southeastern Colorado that they would never expand the site and that they would never allow live-fire. http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-comnews-1738645.php
• The Army has not ruled out the possibility that they might resort to condemnation in order to force ranchers to surrender their land. http://www.lajuntatribunedemocrat.com/articles/2006/05/16/local_news/news01.txt
• In 1983 the Army condemned about half of the property that was seized. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/pinon-canyon.htm  (paragraph 5)
• It is part of a Donald Rumsfeld’s transformation of warfare known as Objective Force. The Army believes that it needs much larger maneuver areas in order to train for this new kind of warfare.  http://www.fortirwinlandexpansion.com/SDEIS_Docs/Appendices/Appendix B/AppB_Appendices/AppA/AppA_Part2.pdf (table A) 
   

• In a 2003 interview, Robert Stack, Range Officer at Fort Carson said, "I just came out of a meeting on future combat systems and the project manager for the unit of action (UA), which is a brigade-sized unit, told us that the radius of action of the UA is 75 kilometers.  That is about a 150-kilometer square box.  It’s a big area, much bigger than our National Training Center.  We are now looking at expanding Pinon Canyon to a size that will accommodate this unit of action."  http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jissue/104546958)

• Army documents indicate that they think they need a 100 kilometer by 100 kilometer box for this training. This converts to 2,500,000 acres. http://sems.carson.army.mil/sems14001/5year_sustainability_plan/11-TrainingLands%205YearPlan.doc  (page 101)

• This is almost exactly the amount of land indicated on a leaked Army map which the army has tried to discredit. http://www.lajuntatribunedemocrat.com/articles/2006/04/10/local_news/news01.txt
  
   

• Shortly after the leaked map came to light, the Army issued its map indicating an “area of interest.”  This map appears to match up perfectly with the earlier map except that it doesn’t include the “area of future expansion.”
   

• There is an expectation on the part of Army planners that $100 million will be spent on land acquisition in the few years.
  http://sems.carson.army.mil/sems14001/4_6_mgmt_review/management_review_minutes/management_review_minutes_12dec05.doc  (page 8)

• This expansion would wipe out hundreds of family farms, destroy several communities and devastate the economy of southeastern Colorado.
• Adding to the concerns of residents is the fact that for several years now the department of defense has been trying to gain an exemption from several environmental laws including the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA, which controls ongoing solid and hazardous waste management), Superfund (CERCLA), and the Clean Air Act.
  http://www.lcv.org/president-and-congress/issues/page.jsp?itemID=28176007

These links are all available at www.holdread.com/pinoncanyon.html

Mail to Doug Holdread:  doug@holdread.com