CPR story link

Here is a link to listen to the story on CPR - Colorado Matters - show of May 7, 2009

David Beating Goliath?

***** (rated with a five out of five stars! ;-)

Colorado Public Radio story on Pinon Canyon

Tonight will be another airing of the Pinon Canyon issue on CPR - one airing is at 10 am (now) and the other is slated for 7pm tonight. We will also link to the archive later on today.

Listen live on line by going to http://www.cpr.org/

Scott McInnis - voted out before he gets out of the gate?

Scott McInnis' statements yesterday about 'not coming out against his former constituents' will last just long enough for those former constituents to eliminate his bid to be the next Governor. The state GOP better start working on another candidate if they want a viable effort mounted.

See Gazette story for more

Geren says Congressional Ban doesn't effect Army

Yesterday's Denver Post had an interview with Army Secretary Pete Geren, as he visited Fort Carson yesterday (hmm - coincidental it's at the same time that HB1317 is on the Governor's desk?).

Part of his statement included:

He also reiterated the Army's determination to pursue an expansion of its Piñon Canyon training ground in southern Colorado and said he does not believe that effort violates a congressional moratorium on acquiring more land.

"The expansion of Piñon Canyon is part of our long-range plans," he said. That plan includes land acquisition "that meets the Army's needs and is acceptable and can be embraced by the landowners" in the area.

"If the Congress were to foreclose that as an option, that would be unfortunate."

Read the Post article
Read the Gazette
Read the Chieftain article this morning
Listen to the entire press conference with Mr. Geren

Army tries to say we're 'imagining things'

At the House Subcommittee hearing (February 24, 2009) the Army made reference to the “rumor mill” in Colorado stating that the ideas that people hold there are scenarios that they have created in their own minds. A quote from Mr. Eastin's testimony, “It was rumored that we were coming out there and before long they had us acquiring, the opposition people and the locals had us acquiring 7 million acres, which would have effectively taken southeast Colorado clear over to the Oklahoma border.”

We refute the suggestion we 'imagine things' and an Army document titled, Analysis of Alternatives, May 6th, 2004 supports our positions. And in their own words .........

In the opening paragraph of this document is the following statement, “The Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site (PCMS) Revision to Section 7 for Fort Carson’s Range and Training Land Program (RTLP) Development Plan, September 2003, identified the multi-phased acquisition of 6.9 million acres of land, currently owned by private land owners and the U.S. Forest Service (Comanche National Grasslands), as an option to the use of this land for large-scale, doctrinally sound Joint and Combined military training for units stationed at or deployed to Fort Carson and PCMS.”

Page 12 of this document includes a map showing 8 phases of Pinon Canyon expansion acquisition extending to the New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas borders. In light of the existence of this document and a half dozen or so other official Army documents which speak of a very large Pinon Canyon expansion, how can the Army still try to assert that such concerns of citizens in southeast Colorado are the product of a rumor mill, or are these concerns based in the reality of the Army’s own documents?

Our future is our kids

All throughout the efforts to stop the expansion of Pinon Canyon the youth of our communities have been tremendous. The support, involvement, maturity and class that all of them have displayed at hearings, public events and elsewhere make us proud of our rural / southeast Colorado heritage.

PCEOC salutes those young people and their leaders/teachers!