LETTERS| Week of January 16

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Weed threat overstated

Numerous times on New Year’s Day, I looked and the sky wasn’t falling [“Colorado goes legal, ho hum,” Weed Between the Lines, Jan. 9] here in Summit County either.

Cannabis (marijuana) prohibitionists lied again. Can’t say the same for the other 48 states, which haven’t re-legalized the God-given superplant yet.

Stan White/Dillon

Good guys kill too

[Re: “Total elapsed time: 80 seconds,” Danish Plan, Dec. 26.] This column is a great exercise in drawing sweeping, universal conclusions from a single instance.

It examines absolutely none of the many problems attendant to actually implementing universal armed school guards as an effective nationwide solution, and it in no way vindicates LaPierre’s simplistic sloganeering.

People are shot by good guys every day. Pierson, for example.

Peter Aretin/via Internet

Udall is Piñon Canyon ally

Sen. Mark Udall has greatly supported us down here in southeastern Colorado in our protracted battle to prevent the Army from expanding the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, thereby militarizing millions of acres of scenic and historic agricultural land.

Back in 2007 he supported an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which blocked spending by the Army for the purpose of expanding Piñon Canyon. (He has supported the year-to-year funding ban ever since.) That same year he introduced an amendment requiring the Army to justify its expansion plan. The report brought to light a number of deficiencies. And he asked the Government Accountability Office to do two studies: an analysis of the Piñon Canyon expansion proposal, and an examination of the overall process by which the military pursues major land acquisitions.

He came to Trinidad and La Junta to gain the first-hand perspectives of multi-generational ranching families whose lands and livelihoods were threatened.

In 2010 he secured a promise from Secretary of the Army John McHugh that no expansion would happen for at least five years. And he stood with us in questioning the Army’s motives for attempting to change the name of Piñon Canyon to “Fort Carson South.”

Most recently he sponsored an amendment that spells out the rigorous requirements the Army must conform to if it wants to try to expand Piñon Canyon in the future. He worked with Assistant Secretary of the Army Katherine Hammack to do something unprecedented: rescind the waiver that authorized Fort Carson to begin acquiring land. With the amendment to the NDAA and the rescinding of the waiver, Sen. Udall has helped us to push the Army back to square one and caused a dark cloud to be lifted from southeastern Colorado. We are most grateful to him.

Doug Holdread/Trinidad