PUEBLO — For five years, ranchers around the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site have battled and blocked the Army from expanding the 238,000- acre training ground northeast of Trinidad, winning legislative fights in Congress as well as the legislature.
But in the past six months, the Pentagon has started a new training initiative with the Air Force, unveiling plans to create a huge, low-altitude training range covering most of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. Many city and county governments in the affected area have sent up emergency flares of opposition, passing resolutions to oppose the low-altitude training flights by four-engine C-130 transports and V-22 Osprey movable rotor aircraft.
For the Piñon Canyon ranchers, the Air Force plan has an ominous resemblance to an Army map from 2004, showing Piñon Canyon growing by increments until it included 7 million acres and encompassed the southeastern corner of the state. Army officials have always dismissed that map, saying it was never approved by the Pentagon or senior Army planners.
Ranchers fighting the expansion note the map’s schedule of phased growth closely resembles the initial property request the Army made in 2009.
“It feels like a steamroller,” said Mack Louden, a newly elected Las Animas County commissioner, who has fought the Army’s expansion effort since 2005.
“It seems like if the Pentagon can’t get what it wants one way, they just come at you from a different angle. But they just keep coming.”
There is a more detailed Army land acquisition plan from 2006, titled “Piñon Vision,” that calls for acquiring 1.1 million acres around the training ground. Creating a training area for “joint force” operations — such as with the Air Force or Marines — is one of the major reasons listed for the planned expansion.
In community meetings about the need to expand Piñon Canyon, Fort Carson’s commander always told the public the Army needed more land because of its unique terrain and its uncrowded air space for both aircraft and communications.
That airspace is now in the Air Force’s plan for low-level training flights — up to three a day and flying as low as 200 feet.
