We at FriedCranes.org have been hard-pressed to come up with ways to illustrate just how huge this project will be. We have known it was large, but somehow, talking in abstractions hides the enormity that faces us all.

The first thing we will do is look at the area involved. It is comprised of 6,200 acres -- nearly 10 full sections of land -- occupying almost 10 square miles just four miles west of Highway 17. That is a ton of land! How do you get your head around it? We drove around it the other day. It took nearly an hour just to cruise around the perimeter.

It was then that we realized that this complex will occupy more land area than the combined towns of the central San Luis Valley: not just Villa Grove, Saguache, Moffat, Crestone/Baca, Hooper, and Center in Saguache County, but the towns of Alamosa and Monte Vista, as well! Take a look at the map below, which includes all of those municipalities exactly to scale and placed within the boundaries of the proposed site.

Kinda mind-blowing, isn't it? You have to ask yourself, "Why are the Saguache County Commissioners plowing ahead blindly pretending that they have the arrogant right to approve this poorly conceived and badly engineered project without putting it to a vote of all of the citizens in Saguache, Alamosa and Rio Grande counties?" After all, we vote on school bonds, library bonds and tax increases. Why are we and our neighbors to the south being frozen out of participating in this momentous decision which is much more important and carries much more severe consequences than a mere mill levy vote?