WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Dec. 22, 2014) -- The drawdown is and will continue to impact many communities across America and in turn, communities have an impact on the drawdown as well, according to a recent report.
The 147-page report, released in October 2014, goes by the lengthy title: "Finding of no significant impact: Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Assessment for Army 2020 Force Structure Realignment," or SPEA/FNSI.
The SPEA/FNSI is the first step in the analysis that the Army goes through in deciding where it will station troops, particularly now in the case of the drawdown, according to Cathryn Kropp, environmental specialist with Installation Management Command, Army Environmental Command, Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
The good news is, as troops are removed from installations and the nearby communities, the environment generally improves, she said, meaning less carbon footprint and less drain on infrastructure like gas, water, electric, and so on.
The bad news, on the other hand, is that communities usually have significant socio-economic impacts, often negative, she said, meaning fewer Soldiers and families shopping and buying or renting dwellings and so on, which in turn lowers property values and the tax base.
Sales, income, employment, population are the socio-economic impact variables. At some installations like Fort Drum, New York; Fort Riley,Kansa; Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; and Fort Stewart, Georgia, all four of the variables reflect negative impacts, she said.
"You can really tie that with the comments from the community," she said. "Those communities with the most significant impacts are going to fight the hardest to keep the military there, because their livelihood depends on them."
While the majority of public comments were directed at keeping troops at their installations, some were not, she said. Some comments received suggesting even more troops should leave were from Hawaii, Colorado and a few other places.
Environment and socio-economic impacts are just a few factors the Army -- ultimately the secretary of the Army -- considers when dealing with where force structure declines take place out to 2020, she emphasized.
For instance, the Army knows which communities have been improving roads, housing, hospitals and schools, but it doesn't know what the communities are planning for the future, she said. As a result, the Army is conducting listening sessions with communities to hear about their future plans for improvements. This will have an impact on the Army's future stationing plans.
Other factors impacting the Army's decisions on where to cut or move troops include how many buildable acres remain on each installation, quality of life on the installation for Soldiers and families such as medical care, how installations are geographically distributed and their distance to anticipated world threats, seaports and airports needed for deployments, how much maneuver land is available for training, number of environmental concerns and so on. All this data is still being gathered and is not part of SPEA/FNSI, she said.
Any cuts that happen as a result of this latest analysis won't happen until October 2015, so it's likely that the secretary of the Army will make his announced decision sometime before then, pending any congressional requirements.
The Army doesn't intend to cut the maximum amount studied at every installation. That doesn't mean that no installation will get the maximum cuts studied, she said. This gives the Army more flexibility in making the cuts.
There was a lot of "public outcry" over the SPEA/FNSI, Kropp said. About 110,000 comments from the public were heard before this report was released, in October. These included mayors and members of Congress.
During the public comment period, "June to August we were very busy," Kropp said, adding that she read most of the comments. All comments were reviewed, analyzed and summarized in the findings of the SPEA/FNSI.
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When the programmatic environmental assessment was done in 2013, the Army was focused on brigade combat teams, known as BCTs, she said. The installations affected by cuts were those with BCTs.
But now to get down to further reductions, it's no longer BCT-based installations that will be experiencing cuts. "There's a lot more fear among installations that they'll be the ones to be cut," Kropp said.
In 2013, the Army looked at 21 installations and prepared for the reduction of 70,000 Soldiers. At the time, the Army was going down from 560,000 active to 490,000.
Then, the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review came out, she said, which stated that 490,000 is not sufficient to balance manpower with modernization and readiness requirements. The number would need to go down much lower to 450,000 or 440,000.
Also, if sequestration kicks in again in fiscal year 2016, the force would need to be further reduced to 420,000.
As a result, more installations were looked at for Soldier and Army civilian reductions and were included in the report, with projections for alternate force reductions, due to the uncertainty surrounding sequestration, which has an impact on planning.
The SPEA/FNSI is required under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.
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Related Links:
SPEA/FNSI report, October 2014 (PDF)
Army invites public to comment on environmental impacts of possible force reductions
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