More troops in the desert could increase El Paso air pollution, strain water resources, tear up fragile topsoil and destroy environmental and archeological sites. On the other hand, those troops also will bring in billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.
So at a sparsely attended meeting at Chapin High School Thursday night (Nov. 9), meant to receive public comment on a draft report, hundreds of pages regarding the impacts on 14 areas, from environment to socioeconomics, the two hands were laid on the table.
When Bill Addington, who successfully fought a radioactive waste site in Sierra Blanca and since has become an advocate of the environment, read a statement from a former Fort Bliss biologist noting the consequences of large-scale growth -- increased water rates, traffic congestion, strain on schools, and destruction of unique desert lands -- Chamber of Commerce President Richard Dayoub shot up in his chair, started taking notes, and when it was his turn to speak, fired back.
“Granted, there are problems ... the realities are, the alternative would have been for Fort Bliss to shrink,” Dayoub said. Fort Bliss will have more positive economic impact than, say, the Toyota plant in San Antonio, Dayoub argued; El Paso must “embrace and recognize” the need for the U.S. military to prepare for conflict around the world.
The report under comment, a document called a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS), is meant to analyze how different options for Fort Bliss growth will impact the El Paso region. The analysis follows a decision by the Base Realignment Commission, known as BRAC, to greatly expand troop numbers and activities at Fort Bliss; essentially, once the community put its best face forward, convincing the military that water was not an issue, that schools and other infrastructure could handle a population increase, the deal was done. Now the public has a chance to analyze the deal in detail, through the SEIS. [link]
“I encourage all of you to read the document to really get what it means,” said Walter Christensen, of the Fort Bliss Directorate of the Environment. He said it several times during a brief overview of the impacts.
Besides the public meeting, and two others like it in Las Cruces and Alamogordo, people can send written comments until Dec. 12.
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The public meeting was preceded by a tour of the impacted desert areas. In fact, I didn’t know much about the issues at hand, and when I found out about the tour, set up because environmental groups had pressured Fort Bliss to allow them to see first-hand what was being discussed in the SEIS, I was just interested in the opportunity to see the base, and learn more about it. It was through the tour that I realized the scope of change at Fort Bliss, and how it would affect the desert, and beyond that, how it might affect the El Paso region. That’s why I went to the Thursday night public comment meeting. I enjoyed the tour much more, and it reminded me why I got into the business of reporting and writing in the first place, to get out in the world and see things.
The tour took place about a week before the meeting, and started at 6:30 a.m., which meant I had to be up at 5:00. Participants were warned it would last 12 hours. As we assembled, in the dark, some people muttered, in mock seriousness, that the length of the tour was a purposeful effort to discourage people from showing up; once out on the range, with its vast spaces, there was no doubt that it would take 12 hours just to see the place, and maybe get a sense of it, let alone really begin to absorb what is out there.
Fort Bliss is huge, containing about 1 million acres. While most know the Army base as the collection of buildings that forms a corner roughly parallel to Railroad Drive and Montana Avenue, in truth it supports its work largely on the desert land that fans outward to the north and east, beyond the New Mexico state line, to the edges of the Sacramento Mountains and up onto the Otero Mesa. It also includes a chunk of land west of U.S. 54, next to White Sands.
That desert land is used by Fort Bliss for a myriad of training, including large maneuvers that involve thousands of troops, and tanks and associated material. The desert land also includes Native American artifacts, homesteads from the first Anglo-European settlers, and important biological resources -- plants and animals and unique terrain that most people never have a chance to see.
Military bases, interestingly, are among the best at cataloguing and preserving such areas, being federal and therefore subject to environmental and historic preservation rules. Hence the Directorate of the Environment, which does fascinating work in attempting to balance care for the natural landscape with the needs of the military to train.
Fort Bliss uses about 335,000 acres in three areas for its training. The preferred option -- called “Alternative 4” in the SEIS -- is to add 352,000 acres to the area used for training. Fort Bliss is slated to receive four heavy brigade combat teams by 2010; the total will bring for maneuvers 1,440 tracked and 7,800 wheeled vehicles and 110 helicopters. There is a “No Action Alternative,” which is required by federal law to be part of the SEIS, although since post expansion already is a done deal, it’s a bit late to consider that alternative.
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After a briefing, including warning us of UXO (unexploded ordnance) snakes and dehydration, and that we needed our own toilet paper, we took off in a four-vehicle caravan made up of two Chevy Tahoes and two Suburbans.
As we drove north and east from the staging area, from the base camp just off Highway 54 less than 10 miles from the state line, we passed mock Iraqi villages, complete with burned-out, bullet-marked cars. While that's not what we were there to see, and indeed were not allowed to take pictures, it definitely opened my eyes. I felt vulnerable just riding with a bunch of environmental folks in a Suburban in a secure military base; I could only imagine what it must be like to make the ride for real. At one point we passed what looked to be Iraqi, or at least Arabic, graffiti.
We also passed cattle tanks -- man made holes in the ground where water collects, where cattlemen used to run their cows and horses over the ground to make the soil dense enough to hold the water. They ranged in size from, say, Olympic swimming pools to small ponds.
The first thing that caught my attention was the Iraqi villages. Next was what we were there to see, the landscape. As we increased elevation and moved north, we came into the grasslands just below the Otero Mesa. For people who never explore the desert beyond what is on the edge of town, or the arroyos within town or the Franklin Mountain, it's an amazing sight. We're talking real grasslands, with tan stalks up to our thighs, in a desert setting, with the Sacramento Mountains escarpment ahead of us and the Otero Mesa scarp a thin line to the right of us. Birds sang loudly. It felt alive, in a much louder fashion than the desert surrounding us, where one has to listen more closely to get a feel for how alive it is. These lands would be part of training under Alternative 4.
Otero Mesa itself, which would not be used for training under any of the scenarios under discussion, is a subject of great debate. Fort Bliss' McGregor Range incorporates a third of it, although the area proposed for maneuvers is not on the mesa proper. Oil and gas companies want to drill in areas in the other two-thirds.
Kevin von Finger, the former Bliss biologist whose statement Addington read, told stories as we drove about the cowboys who used to live out here. He said after a plane crash in the 1950s, a fellow roped up a 50-caliber machine gun and hauled it away. It was never recovered. He tells stories about the oryx, and how one rammed an MP at White Sands. The oryx were imported by New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, according to a National Park Service primer, to provide a big-game animal for hunters. There are now estimated to be thousands of the animals, although nobody knows exactly how many. [nps site]
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The desert crust in some areas is known as cryptogramic crust. It’s a combination of algae and fungus; the desert itself actually lives. And I thought it was just crust formed over time as it rained and hardened. That also happens, to a degree, when calcium carbonate hardens the surface after a rain. Von Finger says a layer can be as thin as cells. What I held in my fingers, the cryptogramic crust, was an eight to a quarter of an inch, and can take hundreds of years to develop. I suddenly felt a bit guilty about scooping up the pieces I was holding.
Disturbing the desert crust can lead to dust in the air. That’s why developers are required to water down when carving out subdivisions. The SEIS notes impacts to El Paso air pollution from expansion of Bliss, both from the extra vehicle traffic from new families, almost 80,000 new people under the “Alternative 4” growth scenario, according to the SEIS, as well as from increased maneuvers involving tanks and other heavy vehicles. It states that the increase in air pollution would not exceed federal standards.
Von Finger cited operations at Fort Irwin, in the Mojave Desert, and said long-term tank training there had torn up the desert and created air. Once disturbed, the desert may never grow its skin back. “The cover of the most well-developed component of the crusts, growing on delicate soil pedicels in undisturbed soils, was reduced by 50% in tank tracks because of destruction and compaction of the uppermost soil layers,” states the abstract of one study. [link]
As we came to within sight of U.S. 54, which bisects Fort Bliss’ training area north of El Paso, in New Mexico, Von Finger tells more cowboy stories. “We’re close to Wilde Well ... Oliver Lea and his boy might be buried around here,” Kevin says.
At the coppic dunes, where tan and reddish sand forming trails around tufts of dirt and vegetation, we see “cracked rock” laying about. Cracked rock are pieces of stone that broke in campfires. The pieces means the area was dotted with campsites; it was used as a trail for the natives making their way to the El Paso river valley. It also has water sources, and is near the famous Escondido site, a pithouse village on BLM land. The sand is tricky. It equally can reveal or bury significant archeologically significant material, and there’s no way to tell what’s in there without massive exploration.
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While we were there to see the desert, since we spent plenty of time in the vehicles moving from site to site, I started reading the SEIS. That’s when I realized what a resource the document was, and how many impacts Fort Bliss has on the area, and how the base expansion might be a bit of a test in many ways.
-- The draft states that El Paso’s water resources would be stretched to the limit as early as 2010, depending on the number of troops. To make up the difference, El Paso will increase water bills by up to 5 percent a year for the next 20 years; in addition, the utility will have to begin importing water by 2030, and possibly as early as 2010. The estimated cost of the infrastructure to get water from the utility’s “water ranches” about 100 miles to the east is $600 million.
-- Noise levels would increase with arms training, possibly enough to be heard in some off-post areas, including Chaparral, N.M.
-- The number of school-age children associated with Fort Bliss would jump under Alternative 4 to 39,000.
-- A question brought up during the public comment, but not in the draft SEIS, is whether Fort Bliss would be test-firing any weapons with depleted uranium, used to tip bullets because of its weight and armor-piercing capability. When it hits, it creates radioactive dust, and has proven to be a cleanup problem on the battlefield and training range -- for example, at Jefferson Proving Grounds in Indiana. Bob Geyer, who asked the question, said he was told depleted uranium would not be used at Fort Bliss, and he requested that the promise be put in writing in the final SEIS.
On the drive home, with several people in the car, a lively discussion about what we saw, and what was in the SEIS, ensued. What does it matter if some desert is destroyed, given the enormous need and desire by El Paso’s leaders to expand Bliss? And what is the value of some desert land, compared to billions of dollars, compared to jobs, compared to providing a livelihood for thousands of El Pasoans? What about the morality of depending on a war economy, or the long-term dependence on the federal government’s largesse? In Dayoub’s Thursday night comments, he pointed out the significance of Bliss -- 15 percent of El Paso’s economy, a percentage expected to grow.
More questions: Are the desert issues as significant as, say, the water issue, or air pollution, or the cost to schools, roads, and the social services?
Big questions, for which there are no easy or definitive answers. In the end, even the ardent defender of nature for its own sake, rather than the value it can bring, saw the difficulty of making his argument.
But he had a counter, one that I can’t get out of my mind: Somebody has to say these things, even if they don’t prevail, even if it’s not popular, or even if on balance the needs of the community outweigh the other considerations, so there’s a record that some people valued what was here, or questioned the value of economics over all else, and at least were able to bring an opposing view to the table.
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Sito Negron can be reached at sito@newspapertree.com.
