Fort Carson creating department to manage Pinon canyon site
Source: Colorado Springs Gazette, by Tom Roeder
October 21, 2007
Fort Carson will move its environmental services under another entity while creating a new department to spearhead management and possible growth of the Piñon Canyon training site.
The post’s Directorate of Environmental Compliance and Management will cease to exist next month, while a new and still unnamed office will take on the Piñon Canyon controversy and other issues. The new office will fall under Tom Warren, Fort Carson’s top environmental officer.
The organizational shake-up makes it clear that the Army is not giving up on its controversial proposal to expand the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in southeast Colorado.
Warren said the changes will put extra emphasis on Piñon Canyon issues, including the Army’s plan to add 418,000 acres to the 235,000 southeast Colorado site, while ensuring that the post’s other environmental and wildlife issues get handled.
The expansion plans are on hold after Colorado lawmakers worked to block Army spending on the proposal.
“The importance of Piñon Canyon to the Army and to Fort Carson, Colorado, is an imperative in my mind,” said Warren, who has led efforts to convince lawmakers and landowners that changing Army tactics and growth at the Colorado Springs post justify the massive land acquisition proposal.
Warren will also have responsibility over how the existing Piñon Canyon land is used, to ensure that training exercises don’t cause environmental damage.
The organizational change was mandated by an Army-wide move to ensure that all its installations had the same management structure.
The bulk of the post’s environmental work, from cleaning up toxic sites to managing endangered and threatened species in training areas, will fall to the post’s public works office, which will absorb the bulk of employees from Warren’s old agency. The rest will go over to the new office with responsibility for Piñon Canyon.
The management changes are unlikely to make a fiscal impact on the post’s budget. Warren said the changes are not expected to add or cut payroll.
“It’s a zero-sum solution,” he said.
