Trinidad Times Independent on the week in review

State lands withheld from Piñon Canyon expansion

By Randy Woock
Staff writer, The Times Independent

Gov. Bill Ritter signed a bill this week to prohibit Colorado from leasing or selling State Land Board lands south of the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site (PCMS) to the Army for the proposed expansion of the Las Animas County site northeast of Trinidad.

State Rep. Wes McKinley, who sponsored HB 09-1317 along with and Rep. Sal Pace, called the bill signing a victory for property rights in southern Colorado. "This shows that private property rights are still honored in Colorado and our governor recognizes that," he said.

Pace did not return calls seeking comment before press time, but had explained the importance of the bill in a previous interview as, "If (the Army) didn't get Land Board land they couldn't get a contiguous expansion together...that's something the Army's said all along, that it (the expansion) needs to be contiguous. Land Board land is all over and it's in small parcels, makes it almost impossible for the Army to expand without it."

The bill also requires the state's attorney general to prevent the Army from using condemnation on any of the state land in the Army's area of interest for the expansion.

Piñon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition (PCEOC) member Lon Robertson described the signing as "another big stride" in the effort to oppose the Army's desired expansion.

"You look back over the past three years, we've started out slow and just kept building momentum," he said. "(The) bill signing, may not stop it (the expansion), but it helps propel us onto the next step, and I would think that (U.S. Reps. John Salazar and Betsy Markey) pushing for a permanent ban would be the next big leap; with the momentum that we have going, we see a lot of great opportunities for that."

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