Colorado: Pitkin County commissioners want out of Air Force training area

Citing concerns about potential health and safety threats to residents, wildlife and protected land, the Pitkin County commissioners are poised to oppose the U.S. Air Force’s low altitude training that has been proposed in local mountains.

“We support a ‘No Action’ alternative, an alternative that removes Pitkin County from the [training] area,” a draft letter from the commissioners to the Air Force reads.

The commissioners are scheduled to review and finalize the letter this afternoon. The Air Force is taking public comments on the proposal through Nov. 5.

An Air Force special operations unit from Cannon Air Force Base, N.M., is seeking to launch low altitude training missions over a 60,700-square-mile area, which includes Pitkin County.

The mountainous terrain of the Elk, Sawatch and San Juan ranges would be ideal training grounds for Air Force special operations forces that prepare for missions in similar landscapes of war zones in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Flights in the low altitude training area would be allowed to go as low as 300 feet above ground level. There would be an average of three missions per day. Ninety-five percent of the operations would occur after dusk.

A draft environmental assessment issued in September by the Air Force gave a “finding of no significant impact” for the proposal on local communities. The military is taking public comment on it before it is finalized next month.

The commissioners had previously called for a more extensive “environmental impact statement,” which they’ve re-stated in their new drafted letter.

It also calls the Air Force’s public process “insufficient,” claiming that enough meetings haven’t been held locally, and that residents weren’t adequately informed of the proposed training. One public meeting was held in Aspen on the proposal last week.

All five of the commissioners attended that open house held at the high school. Commission Chair Rachel Richards voiced concerns about the missions’ potential impact on wildlife and about a lack of local public outreach by the Air Force — concerns that are re-stated in the county’s official letter.

If operations were to launch in the mountains here, the commissioners request that training crews fly at least 2,000 feet above ground over designated wilderness, roadless areas and other sensitive terrain.

They also raised concerns about helicopter noise, and its affect on both backcountry wildlife health and the quiet of resort areas.

Socio-economically, they lamented that the county’s tourism economy is reliant, in part, on visitors seeking “uninterrupted solitude” in the mountains.

The commissioners also requested information on the rates of crashes during training missions, noting that drought and beetle-kill have provided potential for catastrophic wildfire, in the event of a fiery crash.

“As one consideration, the final [assessment] should include the potential costs for crash-related wildfires on public and/or private lands,” the letter states.

Along with the commissioners’ long list of concerns and grievances in the four-page draft letter, they offered a respectful nod toward the need for domestic training during wartime.

“While we have concerns regarding the potential impacts of the proposed low altitude training in our area,” the letter reads, “we also recognize and respect the importance of maintaining the safety of our troops; and the need to train sufficiently to prevent the loss of lives during missions to support special operations forces.”

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