Army loses early round in shell game

MODEL • There are lonelier parts of Colorado, but the desert east of Trinidad is high on the list. Aside from a few head of cattle and fence-lined gravel roads every couple of miles, signs of human habitation are hard to find.

But if you travel Las Animas County Road 48.0 in the afternoon, you may come upon a lone figure carrying a golf club and a shag bag. Butch Curro, the local letter carrier, likes to work on his game after completing his rounds.

Where a postal worker hits golf balls on the parched prairie, the Army wants to lob howitzer shells. It wants to expand the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, a 235,000-acre Fort Carson reserve east of Trinidad, saying it needs to give the troops more elbow room to train for 21st-century battles.

The Army has targeted about 85,000 acres on the south side of the training area - where Curro delivers the mail - for Phase 1 of the expansion. For four years, it has been dueling with landowners who don't want to sell. Now the state of Colorado could take sides against the Pentagon.

The expansion argument has been over private property and whether the Army can buy it or resort to condemnation. A bill in the state Legislature takes a different tack by prohibiting the state from selling or leasing any state lands to augment Piñon Canyon.

Sprinkled across the 85,000 acres are more than a dozen Section 16s and other state holdings. If HB1317 passes, these lands would be off-limits to the Army unless it wants to take on the state in an eminent-domain case.

"It will be a lot more difficult for them to fight us," said state Rep. Sal Pace, D-Pueblo, one of the lead sponsors of the measure.

If the Army declines that battle, the map of any Piñon Canyon expansion would resemble Swiss cheese, except with square holes instead of round ones.

The bill sailed through its first hearing Wednesday. Brushing aside the argument of Rep. Marsha Looper, R-Calhan, that the bill was unconstitutional, the House Agriculture, Livestock & Natural Resources Committee sent it to the full House on an 11-2 vote.

So would the bill make expansion unattractive?

The Army's not saying. Dave Foster, an Army spokesman, said Defense Department policy is not to comment on pending legislation.

Ranchers don't dare to hope. "It would be nice if that were the case," said Lon Robertson, leader of the Piñon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition, of the bill's chances of being a silver bullet. "But, no, I don't believe that will be the final straw."

Robertson said that no obstacle thrown in the Army's path has deterred it, and he didn't expect Pace's bill to be any different.

The Army's persistence is impressive. Congress has ordered it to halt acquisition efforts.

The Government Accountability Office has demanded that the Army offer better reasons for the expansion, and the Base Realignment and Closure Commission has said that, even without Piñon Canyon, Fort Carson has adequate training area for the larger force than is now based there.

But the Piñon Canyon expansion is like a zombie movie: Opponents have tried to shoot it, stab it, strangle it, poison it and drown it, but they have not killed it.

For its part, the Army has been rallying support from the Colorado Springs area, hinting that Fort Carson's desirability as a base would decline unless Piñon Canyon grows. U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs, declined to comment on the state measure, but he supports the expansion, as do Pikes Peak-area business groups that fear the Army could withdraw some Fort Carson units.

The bill's other principal sponsors are Rep. Wes McKinley, D-Walsh, and Sen. Ken Kester, R-Las Animas, whose districts include Piñon Canyon and surrounding areas.

It rankles McKinley that he's having to try to block the Army when Congress has already ordered it to stop spending money to expand Piñon Canyon. "We think the Army is blatantly thumbing their nose at Congress," he said.

Pace recalled Fort Carson's campaign three decades ago to create the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site. "Originally, they wanted to expand in eastern El Paso County," he told a Gazette reporter. "Your citizens in Colorado Springs said, ‘No way, no how, not at all, we're not going to take it.' So if it's not good enough for eastern El Paso County, it's not going to be good enough for ranchers in Las Animas County, either."

Tony Hass, who runs his cattle on leased land on the south side of the training site, spoke of "broken promise after broken promise," and the ranchers can all recite a long list of reasons why the Army has been an untrustworthy neighbor for the past four decades.

Hass is relatively optimistic about the Piñon Canyon bill. "It may not solve it, but it'll sure help," he said.

Ranchers just want to be left alone on their land.

Abel Benavidez, who lives with his wife, son and daughter-in-law on 800 acres, says his family has been on this land for more than a century. "I enjoy my place here, and I intend to die here," he said.

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Call the writer at 476-1654.