Army appeals Pinon Canyon court ruling

he Army is appealing a federal district court ruling in September that rejected its environmental study of the impact of training more soldiers at the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. The appeal was filed Monday with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. In September, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch ruled a 2007 environmental study the Army did as a prerequisite to building more infrastructure at the 238,000-acre training range was insufficient. As a result, Matsch vacated the Army's formal decision to increase the training schedule at Pinon Canyon. The lawsuit was brought by the Not 1 More Acre! group of ranchers, which is opposed to the Army's planned expansion of Pinon Canyon. Matsch sided with the ranchers' argument that the Army's owns records showed past training exercises had done extensive environmental damage to the training range. Matsch ruled the Army's claim that it could increase the training schedule and numbers of soldiers training at Pinon Canyon without doing more harm was "irreconcilable" with its own records...read more