The U.S. Army’s plan to expand its training site in southeastern Colorado would enable it to fire large-bore cannons and tank weapons, a planner at Fort Carson said Thursday.
“If we are granted permission to expand,” said Michael Heredia, chief of the strategic initiatives group at Fort Carson, “one of the options we want to pursue is to fire in the expanded area.”
The Army has proposed expanding its 235,000-acre Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site – between Trinidad and La Junta – by buying land in a roughly 1 million-acre area around the training ground. The proposed expansion area includes a paleontological dig site in the Comanche National Grassland, as well as a portion of the historic Santa Fe Trail.
The area holds “the largest set of fossilized dinosaur tracks in North America,” said Tom Peters, grassland district ranger.
In addition, it has ancient pictographs, petroglyphs and an old Mexican settlement.
“There’s just a lot of history there,” Peters said.
The reactions of residents and landowners have been mixed. Many cattlemen and farmers are opposed to the expansion.
While some small-business owners say they’d be happy to sell, others are waiting for more information.
Open-market prices in the area hover between $250 and $300 an acre, according to ranchers and real estate brokers.
While the Army has said it will purchase land only from willing sellers, U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., said Thursday that he is concerned about the use of eminent domain or condemnation to acquire land.
Salazar plans to hold a public meeting in Pueblo on May 17 with representatives from Fort Carson, the Department of Defense, the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association and the Colorado Independent Cattle Growers Association.
When the site opened in 1983, the Army was prohibited from using live ammunition at Pinon Canyon.
The site’s environmental- impact statement was modified in 2003 to allow small-arms fire, including .50-caliber machine guns.
Two years ago, the Army started live-fire maneuvers, with troops firing from moving vehicles at mock villages.
Tom Warren, Fort Carson’s director of environmental compliance and management, said the Pinon Canyon site isn’t large enough for live-fire tank maneuvers.
Warren said that “for the near term” the plan is to keep large-bore weapons at Fort Carson.
“But things change,” he said. “The needs of the Army have changed from the Cold War to whatever era we call this. So has the lethality of the equipment.”
Fort Carson is relatively small, encompassing 137,000 acres, Warren said.
Tank-mounted guns and self-propelled cannons deployed in Iraq have a range of roughly 10 to 11 miles.
“From an environmental point of view, they take good care of the land,” said Bill Wilkinson, a cattlemen’s association official and a rancher whose property abuts Pinon Canyon.
“They don’t bother us, and we don’t bother them,” Wilkinson said.
Staff writer Mike McPhee can be reached at 303-820-1409 or mmcphee@denverpost.com.
