The U.S. Army’s effort to expand its Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site will be on hold for at least a year if the Senate goes along with a House vote freezing any use of funds for that purpose.
The Army should use the timeout to re-engage local leaders and revamp its approach to the project.
The House voted 383-34 to back an amendment by Reps. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Fort Morgan, and John Salazar, D-Manassa, barring the military from using any of the money in its 2008 budget for any actions related to expanding its land holdings in southeastern Colorado. Unless the Senate reverses the House action, the Army couldn’t even begin the environmental impact studies necessary to pave the way for the expansion.
The Senate is unlikely to consider the issue for several weeks, since it is currently weighing in on energy and then is braced for what is likely to be a rancorous debate over immigration. (See editorial below.) But the lopsided House vote and the skepticism voiced by Colorado’s junior senator, Ken Salazar, bodes ill for the Army’s chances in the upper chamber. Colorado’s senior senator, Republican Wayne Allard, has said he hopes the Army can avoid politically unpopular condemnation proceedings.
Politics aside, the federal government is understandably reluctant to totally rule out using its eminent domain powers on a subject as critical as national defense. That’s why the House amendment drafted by Musgrave sidestepped the condemnation issue by simply forbidding the Army from using money for anything connected to the expansion.
At the other end of the spectrum, some Army critics have sought to ban it from buying from even willing sellers. But forbidding ranch families who may have worked their land for generations from selling to the highest bidder could send their property values plummeting. That is surely at least as great an infringement on their property rights as telling them that they must sell.
The Army would be wise to use the breathing spell handed it by passage of the Musgrave/Salazar amendment to meet anew with state and local leaders and try for a better resolution of this issue. It’s already thankfully ruled out the Picket Wire Canyon area south of the existing site that hosts thousands of dinosaur tracks, prehistoric Indian pictographs and other artifacts, as well as the environmentally fragile Comanche National Grasslands. Now the Army needs to assure community leaders that its expansion plans won’t deal a fatal blow to southeastern Colorado’s agriculture and economy.
