Air Force the new Pinon Canyon foe

For five years, ranchers around the Pinon 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 General Assembly. 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 Pinon Canyon ranchers, the Air Force plan has an ominous resemblance to an Army map from 2004, showing Pinon Canyon growing by increments until it includes 7 million acres and encompasses 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 actually made in 2009. "It feels like a steam-roller," 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." 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. Air Force planners argue the night flights out of Cannon Air Force Base, N.M., would not be disruptive and would steer clear of major cities and towns. That's not the ranchers' concern. "Our problem is the funding ban has only applied to the Army," said Lon Robertson, president of the Pinon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition. Robertson was referring to the year-to-year ban in the federal budget that prohibits the Army from spending any money on the maneuver site expansion, starting in 2007...more