NOT 1 MORE ACRE! (Pinon Canyon Update)

from Not 1 More Acre!

It's been three months since our seven-year-old funding ban prohibiting spending on any aspect of expansion -- the largest planned military expansion in US history -- at the Pentagon's Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in southern Colorado was thrown under the bus by United States Senator Mark Udall and Congressman Cory Gardner.
Together those politicians opened the money spigot wide, and immediately a new flood of tax dollars are pouring in to realize the Pentagon's vision of turning this vast region into the world's epicenter for developing full-scale electronic warfare.
In the 1980s, the Pentagon located its Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site (PCMS) on 250,000 acres of fragile shortgrass prairie at the headwinds of the Dust Bowl for political advantage not military necessity. In 1999, the Pentagon secretly began planning massive expansion of land and air for enhanced military operations at PCMS that, despite denials by politicians, continues to this day.
The defense industry's ongoing expanded and intensified use of PCMS with its insatiable greed for land, money and power threaten thousands of generational family ranchers and communities that have fed America and protected the nation's unique and last remaining native shortgrass prairie for well over a century.

Every taxpayer has reason to be outraged. Here's one generational rancher's first-hand description of what our tax dollars are buying.
The problem is the military and its contractors do not know how to fix what they have torn up--it is hard to gather early American people bones and rebury them. It is impossible to bring back springs they have ruined, the trees they get such joy out of running over with tanks will never come back. It takes at least a hundred years for the grass to come back where they have destroyed it. When it comes back it is not the same native grass, it is weeds like mustard weed, dobie weed, etc. Then there are patches between that are bare and blow away or wash away in case there should be any rain or snow with an amount to wash. We have a bean field that was plowed in the very early 1900's and it is still no good. Just a weed patch. The army says they replant where they ruin--they don't know it takes moisture for a seed to sprout and more for it to grow. We have been in a drought for 10 years -- my son's cattle have been in four states on pasture. He knows if you use the land for grazing when there isn't enough grass, it will die out. The army doesn't give a damn. As one general told a group of us in a farce meeting, "We don't take land to take care of it. We take it to tear it up!" I have to say that was very reassuring! All the others had lied and said they weren't tearing it up!
Any time we get any correspondence from the government we know they are coming again. They don't bring the big stuff down the highway any more--they take it in on spurs of railroad. No live fire? No planes or choppers flying a few feet off the ground? No drones? Hummmm--I wonder just what it was? Sounded like bullets whizzing by and sure did look like a chopper so close the people inside could be seen!
When you get moved here, you will see a big wet cloud destroyed by up to 50 planes with contrails spewed out, going through the clouds until they are completely gone. The ones that appear are not clouds, they are concentrated contrails. Where do all the chemicals from the contrails end up? No doubt on the land where there is no moisture. It will save the army having to destroy every living thing when they come in a condemn more ranches because the ranchers and farmers that have taken care of it have let it be ruined, so the government liars will say.
Any one who has not lived through this nightmare for over 30 years cannot fathom the evil the government does to citizens who are hard working people making a living and feeding the very people who want to destroy us!
Farms in the Arkansas valley are tumble weed now--water gone to the big cities up north. Like Rocky Ford cantaloupe? Guess what, they are few and far between, just like the sweet corn on the cob, wonderful bell peppers, tomatoes, chili peppers - water gone.
The government came and tried to bully the ranchers and farmers into selling for the secretly planned expansion. When that didn't work they set out to destroy everything that had been worked for, for 4 and 5 generations. With the contrails, dust, drought, and chemicals killing trees and grass they think they will finally get the land. They even have the Heritage Foundation coming in trying to take over. They sure do make it sound good--don't tell you the Park Service is the head of the whole deal and can take it over to the point you cannot move a post without permission from the Park Service. They will, however, make sure you pay YOUR property taxes!
Guess you might say I am fed up and sick of this whole fiasco, just as you will be when you are living here.