Posted: Friday, January 28, 2011 12:00 am
THE ACTING senior commander at Fort Carson says there are no current plans and no money to expand Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site — but only for the next few years.
Brig. Gen. James Doty made the statement during a meeting with The Chieftain’s editorial board this week. And, at the moment, the money for expansion doesn’t appear to be in the Pentagon’s budget.
On Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Congress, by holding the Pentagon to last year’s spending level, would create a $23 billion gap in his department’s needs. In other words, there would be no money for things such as land acquisition.
In light of that, the Pentagon should order Fort Carson not to spend any money on land acquisition, and it should do so now. As it is, the fort has been granted Defense Department authority in the form of a waiver to pursue expansion. That waiver must be countermanded now.
However, the Army is prohibited from spending money on acquisition by virtue of an amendment to the Pentagon’s spending authorization legislation. That prohibition first was sponsored by Reps. Marilyn Musgrave and John Salazar and subsequently renewed by the same amendment sponsored by Reps. Salazar and Betsy Markey.
Now the area is represented by Reps. Scott Tipton and Cory Gardner, whom we earnestly urge to continue the ban in the new budget cycle. The Army has never made a persuasive case that it needs more area at Pinon Canyon. Even though it now appears a change in Army training doctrine will make the alleged need temporarily moot, we must never stop fighting any expansion plan.
Under that new doctrine, only relatively small units would train at any given time, meaning any need for even more than the 238,000 acres at Pinon Canyon has disappeared. But vigilance is needed, because new officers in charge of Pentagon planning could change doctrine again, and Pinon Canyon could be in the sights of a new regime.
Nonetheless, the Pentagon should rescind the waiver so that it’s clear that Fort Carson has no authority whatsoever to purchase land around the Pinon Canyon site. Once a bureaucracy — even the Army’s — gets a project under way, that effort gains a life of its own unless it is stopped dead in its tracks.
What’s deeply troubling is that the uncertainty faced by neighboring ranchers makes it difficult for them to make rational decisions about financing improvements on their spreads. And the cattle industry is huge in Southeastern Colorado.
La Junta cattle sales are second in volume only to those in Oklahoma City. Ranching and farming provide the lifeblood of the Lower Arkansas Valley’s economy and directly benefits Pueblo’s economy. Just as the valley needs to protect its water for farming, it needs to protect the ranching interests, some of which go back three or four generations.
The Army has no need to expand the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. It should halt any and all efforts toward that end — now.
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