DENVER—Opponents of a plan to expand the Army’s Pinon Canyon training site contend the Army hasn’t fully considered the environmental impacts of increasing training there.
Not 1 More Acre! and others suing the Army outlined their arguments in an opening brief filed in U.S. District Court in Denver last week.
The group and other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in April asking a judge to make sure the Army complies with the National Environmental Policy Act before making changes at the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site.
The plaintiffs contend the Army violated the act by failing to fully consider reasonable alternatives to its plan to increase the frequency, duration and intensity of training at Pinon Canyon in southeastern Colorado, such as holding training elsewhere.
It also contends the Army didn’t include proposals to physically expand the training site when it wrote an environmental impact statement on the effects of increasing training.
The Army has said plans to boost training are separate from plans to increase the size of the training site.
A final environmental impact statement published last year for the Army includes sections on how increased training activities at Pinon Canyon might affect vegetation, wildlife, cultural resources and the economy.
The Army once proposed expanding the Pinon Canyon site from 370 square miles to more than 1,000 square miles but has since scaled that back to about 525 square miles. Army officials have said they would seek to acquire land for an expansion from willing sellers, but thousands of surrounding ranchers, farmers and others are still concerned about how an expansion could affect their livelihoods.
An Army spokesman referred questions on the lawsuit to a Justice Department representative, who was out of the office Wednesday and not available for comment.
The military has said it needs to boost training at Pinon Canyon to accommodate new weapons, tactics and an influx of more soldiers at Fort Carson.
