Army: There's no plan for Fort Carson to annex Pinon Canyon

An Army plan to have Fort Carson "annex" the 238,000-acre Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site for management and budget purposes never was approved for action, Army lawyers told ranchers opposing the expansion of the Army training ground Wednesday. The annexation plan was obtained by the Not 1 More Acre group as part of its successful lawsuit in U.S. District Court. The ranchers had challenged the 2007 environmental impact study the Army conducted to support training more troops, more often at Pinon Canyon. Two weeks ago, District Judge Richard Matsch set aside the Army study, saying it was severely inadequate - a decision that blocked the Army's plan to increase training schedules at Pinon Canyon. But the annexation plan caused alarm among foes of the Army's expansion efforts at Pinon Canyon. The plan called for the annexation to occur by this Oct. 1. Having successfully lobbied Congress two years ago to approve an annual ban on the Army spending money on the expansion, the ranchers argued the plan to make Pinon Canyon a "sub-installation" of Fort Carson was an effort to evade that congressional moratorium. "We were in federal court over the Army's failure to publicly disclose their unlimited expansion plans when we learned Fort Carson was secretly planning to take Pinon Canyon as its own," Mack Louden, a board member of the group, said Wednesday...PuebloChieftain