Army plan for copters reignites long feud

A new front has opened in the fight between the Army and the ranching community around the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site as Fort Carson lays the groundwork to have a new 113-helicopter Combat Aviation Brigade — including unmanned drones — join in a heavier training schedule at the 235,000-acre range northeast of Trinidad. That can't happen until the Army declares there won't be any significant environmental damage from that training. To that end, Fort Carson officials issued a draft analysis earlier this year — an assessment rather than a full-blown environmental study — that makes that claim. Not surprisingly, foes of the Army's past efforts to expand the Las Animas County training range have declared the latest environmental assessment an illegal end run around a 2009 federal court ruling against the Army. In that decision, U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch set aside the Army's formal declaration— called a decision of record — that Pinon Canyon could withstand heavier use by more troops. Matsch called the Army's environmental study in support of a heavier training schedule"grossly inadequate" and at odds with its own records of past damage at the prairie training range. In this latest confrontation, the Army gave the public until Feb. 2 to file any comments on its claim that helicopter training at Pinon Canyon would not create any significant or unfixable damage. It conducted three public meetings in January and many of the same Southern Colorado residents who worked to block the expansion of Pinon Canyon for the past six years turned out to challenge the Army on the helicopter training plan as well...more