Brigade Announcement ??Not The Apocalypse’
By ABC-7 Reporter Martin Bartlett
EL PASO — The Fort Bliss building blitz will continue despite a hiccup of bad news from the Pentagon.
The post is one of three losing a planned bridage combat team that means 3,500 fewer troops will call Ft. Bliss home than might have.
This move does not effect the 38,000 troops who’ll be coming because of Base Reallignment and Closure (BRAC).
That means the next time you take a drive anywhere near Ft. Bliss, you’ll see at least as much construction orange as military green on-post and off.
“A partnership means you got to give and take,” said Ray Adauto, executive vice president of the El Paso Builders Association.
Members of the association aren’t planning to stop building because of the news from the Department of Defense.
“This announcement made by the D.O.D. is not the apocalypse; it’s an adjustment,” he said.The post’s 2,000 square-mile military reservation is among the biggest training ground in the Army and U.S. Senate leaders say it’ll help keep the post well-positioned, buoying hopes.
“The Army has few installations that can match the ranges, maneuver areas, and rapid deployment capability available at Fort Bliss and McGregor Range,” Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, (R) Texas, said in a statement on Tuesday. “The overseas base commission, the 2005 BRAC, and a host of internal Pentagon reviews and studies have concluded that Fort Bliss could provide excellent training facilities for additional brigades.”
Local government leaders have said they’ll continue to support construction on- and off-post.
“We still have a majority of the soldiers that are coming in and their families,” Cook said. “We’re just going to scale back a bit.”
And builders, like those represented by Adauto, will keep building: “Just relax, take it easy, we’ll get those jobs back, we’ll get those buildings back,” Adauto said. “We’ll get that Army unit back, but we’ve got to continue to work hard to ensure that.”
