Judge's ruling underscores Army's need for expanded Piñon Canyon

A judge's order dumping the Army's plan for increased training at Fort Carson's Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site has ranchers cheering, but says one thing they didn't want to hear: The Army likely needs more than the 235,000 acres of former ranchland in Las Animas County it already owns.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch says arguments over the environmental impact of more tanks and soldiers training at the existing site "makes it apparent the Army's purposes will not be met without expansion." In his decision, Matsch threw out an Army environmental review authorizing year-round training at the site that also called for construction of several buildings and allowed the use of hand grenades.

The environmental review examined training the post's burgeoning number of soldiers on the existing land and didn't address the controversial proposal to lease 100,000 additional acres for training.

The judge told the Army to be more specific about how much training might take place and how it could damage the fragile short-grass prairie. The Army sought the increased training to accommodate 6,500 additional soldiers who moved to Fort Carson this year.

The Army and the Justice Department on Wednesday said they were "still reviewing" Matsch's Tuesday ruling and had no comment.

Stephen Harris, a Colorado Springs attorney who brought the suit on behalf of expansion opposition group Not 1 More Acre!, said while Matsch acknowledged that the Army's best solution may be more land, the prospect of the Army acquiring more acreage grows increasingly unlikely as opposition builds.

"It would be good if the Army simply decided to stop now," he said.

The Army hasn't dropped its desire for more land, and the ruling could give its arguments new life.

Matsch's ruling doesn't forbid training at Pinon Canyon, but it does stop an increase in training above historic levels. In recent years, the Army has used the site sparingly and in 2009 the only major unit that trained there was the 4th Brigade Combat Team in an exercise that readied soldiers for duty in Afghanistan.

Since 2004, the Army has battled to add land to the site, claiming that new tactics and additional soldiers at Fort Carson rendered the site too small to meet its needs.

Cattle and soldiers require vast tracts because the fragile land can take years to recover from human impacts. Mac Louden, who heads Not 1 More Acre!, said Wednesday that ranchers plan giving each head of cattle 60 acres to graze.

Fort Carson has shown care in its land use, barring troops from land for months or years after a training exercise to let the prairie rebound.

The new training plan would have allowed the Army to use all of its land at once for indefinite periods of time to allow more soldiers to practice for combat.

"It was just going to dustbowl this whole area," said Louden.

Matsch didn't describe the consequences of increased training but said Army arguments that there would be no significant impact on the land were "counter-intuitive."

The Army has two clear options. It can appeal the case, which would probably tie it up in the courts for more than a year, or it could draw up a new environmental impact report and go through a contentious round of public hearings, which would also take more than a year.

Harris said the Army could also do both, by battling the court's decision while bowing to it by drafting another report.

In theory, the Army could come back with a new report saying training would turn the land into a moonscape and still get its way, Harris said. The National Environmental Policy Act doesn't require the Army to avoid harming the land, it just requires full disclosure of what harm the proposed use would cause and what mitigating steps would be taken.

That and the decision's contention that the Army does need more land if it intends to use Pinion Canyon for high-volume training has expansion opponents tempering their glee over the ruling.

While the state of Colorado has moved to block expansion by legislation that would ban the sale of some of the land the Army covets, and Congress has twice blocked funding for land purchases, the Army hasn't given up.

Army brass have toured Las Animas County in a public relations campaign offering jobs and saying they would only get land from "willing sellers." They gravitated toward a lease deal after it became apparent that the opposition to land purchases was strong.

Opponents have countered that the service has enough land, an argument that the court decision counters even as it slams the Army for not doing enough to protect the environment.

"We learned a long time ago you don't celebrate these things, you just appreciate them," said Lon Robertson, a rancher who heads the Pinon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition.