It was heartening to hear that the U.S. Army has massively scaled back the amount of land it says it needs to expand its training grounds in southeastern Colorado.
It’s still unclear whether the 100,000 acres the military wants near the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site encompasses land that owners are willing to sell. In a perfect world, it would.
While these matters rarely come together so neatly, surely at this point there must be a way to forge a compromise between the Army and anxious land owners.
If property owners don’t want to sell, perhaps they would be willing to lease land to the military.
The Army also could work around certain parcels as it conducts training exercises, acting as if certain stretches of land that it doesn’t own are “Red Cross areas” or “heavily populated villages” that should be avoided.
There also must be a way to come up with adequate environmental protections for the area.
The issue came to light more than two years ago when the Army announced it wanted to expand its 236,000-acre Piñon Canyon area by more than 400,000 acres, making it the largest Army training site in the country.
Opposition erupted immediately from 500 ranchers and land owners who said the Army hadn’t been forthright about its plans and had failed to say why it needs so much property.
In 2007, the Colorado congressional delegation slipped a measure into the defense appropriations bill for 2008 that amounted to a one-year prohibition on the Army spending money for Piñon land acquisition.
However, an attempt to insert a similar measure into the 2009 defense appropriations bill failed in committee Thursday. But it’s not necessarily over yet. The bill now moves to the Senate floor, where it yet may be amended.
At this point, we hope a compromise is in the offing.
We understand the objections of ranchers and land owners, some of whom have owned their property for generations. They have grave objections about losing their land and way of life.
They also have valid concerns about whether the Army has been completely candid about its need for land for training maneuvers. We hope some of the answers emerge from a new Army study set to be reviewed by the Government Accountability Office.
Certainly, the dramatic reduction in the amount of land the Army says it needs points to either a military miscalculation at the outset or a big change in plans.
We realize the Army has legitimate training needs that have evolved with the changing nature of world conflict. It is imperative to train soldiers adequately for the dangers they will face.
We hope those on both sides who have invested so much time fighting over the expansion will now spend as much time coming to a compromise that would be in everyone’s interest.
