Bill Signing used to create more fear

Today's editorial in the Denver Post (read the full article here)

The well written response to that article:

From the perspective of those of us who live in the area of Pinon Canyon, there are three fallacies in this editorial; 1. that the people of southeastern Colorado should "compromise" with the Army, 2. that an Environmental Impact Statement should be done, and 3. that the Army might pull out of Colorado all together.

First of all, we already made a huge compromised with Army. It occurred in the early ???80s when over a quarter of a million acres of land was taken out of the heart of Las Animas County to create the current Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. American citizens were forcibly removed from their land and we lost the tax revenue associated with it. A magnificent landscape rich with archaeological and historical treasures, which had been on track to receive National Natural Landmark designation became instead a live-fire range.

But it was framed as a compromise; as a "win-win." Army brass told us, "You give up the land and in exchange we'll hire people and contract with locals and you'll see economic benefits come to your region." Ranchers were called upon to do their patriotic duty, to give up the homes that their families had lived in for a century for the benefit of the military and the local economy. We were assured that lost taxes would be compensated for. And we were promised that there would be no further compromises required of us; that there would be no further future expansions.

So we've already tried the compromise thing and found it lacking.

Secondly, there is a misunderstanding of the purpose and the effect of an Environment Impact Statement. An EIS is not the beginning of a process but in effect it is the last step which sort of ties a nice bow around a project. By the time an EIS is completed tremendous time and money have been poured into the process and it is rare in deed that a project is scraped once an EIS has been done.

Congress understands this. That's why they placed a ban upon the Army, prohibiting them from moving forward with an EIS and instead requiring them to justify the expansion to Congress in a less formal report. According to the Government Accountability Office, they failed to do that. Congress has done the right thing in blocking the funding for a Pinon Canyon expansion EIS.

Thirdly, the idea that the Army will behave like a petulant child, pick up its marbles and move out of the state, just because they didn't get what they wanted, is ridiculous. How can they argue that they are suffering from a shortfall of training lands and at the same time threaten to abandon what they have called one of the best training facilities in the country? The threat by Army bureaucrats that they might pull up stakes is pure coercion.

The people of southeastern Colorado are doing the right thing in refusing to compromise. Congress has done the right thing in blocking an EIS. Our state legislature and Gov. Ritter are doing the right thing in deciding not to sell state school lands to the military. And we will all be doing the right thing to take a deep breath and relax about the Pentagon's idol threat that they're going to leave the state.

Doug Holdread