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If America ran sensibly, environmental impact statements would be required for environmental impact statements.
At hand is the Draft Environmental Impact Statement
for the Colorado Airspace Initiative
weighing in at 5
pounds, 13 ounces. It has been widely distributed -- how
many trees died to produce all this paper?
The statement was produced after hearings in 1993 and 1994 all around the state. People drive to hearings -- how much irreplaceable fossil fuel was consumed and converted into potential greenhouse global-warming carbon dioxide?
Then consider things like the toxic ozone generated by making xerographic copies, the gasoline consumed by postal trucks hauling this stuff around, the coal-fired boilers spinning generators to produce electricity to power the computers used by the consultants and the interested parties.
Add it all up, and who knows? Perhaps the humble environmental impact statement causes more environmental damage than its topic.
The topic of this statement: training flights by the 140th Wing of the Colorado Air National Guard, based at Buckley Air National Guard Base in Aurora.
Presumably there are economic benefits to having a National Guard unit in town -- at least politicians are always eager to appear at the ribbon-cutting for a new armory -- and since Aurora gets those benefits, why not just conduct the training over Aurora?
No trees or high buildings to get in the way as F-16 fighters roar along just 300 feet overhead and then zoom up to practice dogfights, and a few air-to-surface missiles could pretty well eliminate blight along East Colfax Avenue.
But for some reason, Aurora wants the payroll, but not the noise. So other sacrifice zones must be found.
Thus the Colorado Airspace Initiative -- a clever piece
of nomenclature. Initiative
implies that it was a
process initiated by people carrying around petitions,
rather than something imposed by state and federal
authorities.
Military training airspace comes in two forms. Practice routes (Military Training Routes or MTRs in EIS jargon) are corridors where pilots work on their navigation and general flying skills. Practice areas (Military Operations Areas) are large zones where they work on interception and combat skills.
These need to be near Buckley, but not so near that they disturb what's important in Colorado -- DIA and the populated zones along the Front Range.
So the route goes east from Buckley before dividing. One MTR goes north by Sterling toward Scottsbluff, Neb., before veering west to Wheatland, Wyo. Near the corner where Nebraska, Wyoming and Colorado come together, there's the Cougar MOA.
Near Rocky Ford, the southern corridor splits into several MTRs that lead to five MOAs. Of local concern is the La Veta MOA, roughly bounded by Walsenburg, Great Sand Dunes National Park and the town of Wetmore. One MTR enters the mountains west of Castle Rock, goes southwest across South Park, crosses the Sangre de Cristo Range at Hayden Pass, and extends along the west flank of the Sangres to the La Veta MOA.
Many people hereabouts aren't happy about this. The proposed new routes are modifications of existing military airspace, and even I have found it disconcerting, when I am in Westcliffe, to see the dogs stirring and yapping on Main Street after the jets zoom by.
At first I thought the opponents could get some help
from People for the West!, since this appears to be a
takings
issue.
How? Suppose you bought 35 rural acres (I have recently received considerable correspondence advising me that buyers of 35-acre parcels are excellent citizens) with the idea that you'd enjoy a serene rural haven. Jets thundering overhead would certainly reduce your property's value. So here's a governmental action that reduces property values -- where are the property-rights advocates when my neighbors need them?
Then again, the opposition could represent the usual Not In My Back Yard complaints. They want the benefits of a strong national defense, but they don't want to put up with the side-effects like having their livestock spooked, or paying for cleaning up toxic materials if there's a crash.
That's not an idle worry. In 1992, an Air National Guard
C-130 crashed in Morgan County, West Virginia, spilling 250
gallons of fuel. The county spent $10,886.26 to clean it
up, and set the bill to the Guard, which passed it to the
Air Force, which said the county government has a legal
obligation ...
In 1995, Morgan County still hadn't been paid, and so its commissioners passed a resolution closing the county's airspace to military training missions. Only then did the county get repaid.
Not everybody under the Colorado Airspace Imposition is opposed, of course. I've met a few people who say it's a great blessing -- with the noise, fewer people will want to move into Custer, Saguache and Huerfano counties, and thus the growth problem could be solved.
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