Fort Benning proposes to develop, operate, and maintain a HOMMTA of at least 2,400 acres for off-road armor vehicle movement and maneuver on the 182,000-acre Installation. The training area would support the Maneuver Center of Excellence (MCoE) in its mission to train the maneuver forces of the Army and increase the total amount of maneuver space on Fort Benning.

This increase would reduce the competition for limited off-road maneuver space between the MCoE and Fort Benning tenant units. The HOMMTA would provide realistic off-road training, including enough space to support off-road movement and maneuver to target opposing forces.

The area would allow for training consistent with the Army's recent adoption of a new cross-domain movement and maneuver training strategy. This strategy requires dispersed operation of maneuver units necessitating larger training space.

The purpose of the Proposed Action is to provide Fort Benning with a HOMMTA consistent with the requirements of the MCoE and Fort Benning's tenant units. According to Army-wide Programs of Instruction, the MCoE requires 50,000 maneuver acres (Infantry) and 87,300 maneuver acres (Armor) of training area. Infantry training can use Armor training areas when available, but not vice versa.

The Proposed Action is needed to address the lack of sufficient contiguous off-road maneuver area to meet training requirements for heavy armor vehicle (tracked and wheeled) off-road maneuver training at Fort Benning.

This lack of maneuver space has recently become more problematic since the Army's training strategy has changed and requires a more dispersed approach to movement and maneuver. The Good Hope Maneuver Training Area (GHMTA) does not have available area and time for both the required MCoE courses and deployable tenant units. Managing demand for the training area through scheduling is no longer a viable option.

Fort Benning has determined that the MCoE can meet training requirements and accomplish heavy armor vehicle (tracked and wheeled) off-road maneuver training only by designating a HOMMTA of at least an additional 2,400 contiguous acres.

The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA; 42 U.S.C. § 4321 et seq.) and the Army NEPA Regulation contained in Environmental Analysis of Army Actions (32 CFR Part 651) require the Army to consider the potential environmental impacts of its proposed actions and alternatives and to solicit the views of the public in order to make an informed final decision regarding how to proceed.

The NEPA process will inform Army decision-makers of potential environmental and socioeconomic impacts that may result from the proposed development, operation, and maintenance of a HOMMTA for armor vehicle movement and maneuver under three reasonable alternatives.

This analysis will allow Army decision-makers to compare and contrast the potential environmental and socioeconomic impacts of alternative locations capable of supporting the training requirements at Fort Benning. The Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) will also inform the decision-maker and public of potential environmental and socioeconomic effects associated with the No Action Alternative, prior to making a decision on a course of action.

No, none of the alternatives proposed for consideration involves the acquisition of any property beyond Fort Benning's existing boundaries. All proposed alternatives are contained within existing Fort Benning property.

Although it would seem Fort Benning needs less maneuver area without the 3/3 ABCT, that is not the case. The 3/3 ABCT also experienced a lack of suitable heavy off-road mounted maneuver area availability at Fort Benning. The 3/3 ABCT's deactivation temporarily lessened the shortfall of contiguous, heavy off-road mounted maneuver training area.

Current Fort Benning units and updated training requirements, including the Army's recent adoption of the cross-domain movement and maneuver training strategy, requires additional suitable heavy off-road mounted maneuver training area.

Last fiscal year, the MCoE had 79 courses that required heavy off-road maneuver training, trained approximately 8,000 Soldiers, and more scheduled for FY19.

Training must be updated regularly to prepare Soldiers for current and evolving threats. As such, the training requirements and facilities must also be modified so that Soldiers can train as they would fight in warfare. The HOMMTA would facilitate training consistent with the Army's recent adoption of a new cross-domain movement and maneuver training strategy. This training strategy requires a more dispersed approach to armor movement and maneuver, one that cannot adequately be accomplished on currently available training areas.

The Proposed Action includes contiguous training area suitable for force-on-force training for up to eight armor vehicles at one time. Movement, which limits mounted maneuver to tank trails and a limited area nearby those trails, is not enough. Maneuver, which allows mounted maneuver more freedom of movement off-road and throughout the training area, is needed to support that training. Currently, there is no training area on Fort Benning able to support this training sufficiently.

Of Fort Benning's 182,000 acres, approximately 12,500 acres are cantonment area, 16,000 acres are dudded impact areas, and 13,000 acres encompass 83 live fire ranges and their associated exclusion areas. In addition, the safety buffers associated with surface danger zones on the live fire ranges regularly restricts access for training on approximately 62,000 acres of non-dudded training areas.

The remaining 78,500 acres support both mounted and dismounted maneuver for armor and infantry training. At present, only GHMTA can support off-road heavy maneuver due to other training requirements. As discussed further in Q7, GHMTA does not and cannot provide at least 2,400 contiguous acres needed to support the off-road armor vehicle movement and maneuver.

The only off-road mounted maneuver training area currently on Fort Benning is the GHMTA. When completed in March 2012, the original GHMTA provided non-contiguous training areas intended for training the four platoons and one company needed to conduct the Armor Officer Basic Leader Course (AR BOLC).

These areas are known as sub-Maneuver Training Areas (sub-MTAs). The first AR BOLC class began training at the GHMTA in July 2012. During Fiscal Years 2012-2017, Fort Benning made improvements to the GHMTA, including installing additional permanent environmental mitigation measures, upgrades to low water crossings, and expansion of maneuver trails/roads into maneuver corridors.

Some of these improvements supported the transformation of several sub-MTAs into larger, contiguous MTAs. Despite these upgrades, it became evident that existing GHMTA landscape (i.e., slope, streams/creeks, and wetlands) would not support the increasing maneuver training requirements for the MCoE and Fort Benning's tenant units.

Current GHMTA maneuver boxes do not provide enough contiguous off-road maneuver space. Of the available 11,154 acres of the GHMTA, only 1,952 non-contiguous acres, with no more than 371 acres of open and maneuverable terrain in any section, can be used for heavy off-road mounted maneuver.

The effective range of the M-1 Abrams, the Army's main battle tank, is greater than 2 kilometers. Therefore, the size of the maneuver boxes allows effective targeting of the entire battlespace without moving the tanks and fails to achieve the purpose of maneuver training.

In addition to the lack of contiguous maneuver space, the available areas do not support all required off-road mounted training as they contain choke points and maneuver restrictions.

When fully developed, the GHMTA will provide up to 4,000 acres of useable off-road maneuver land; however, the GHMTA's landscape will still not be able to support training activities needed to comply with recent changes in training strategy.

While Fort Benning has a total heavy maneuver land shortfall, this shortfall can be partially reduced through implementing sustainable land management practices, the use of simulations, and coordinated range scheduling.

The Army's Sustainable Range Program (SRP) centers on effective planning, ecosystem management, and erosion control practices. The SRP is designed to maximize the capability, availability, accessibility, and long-term sustainability of ranges and training lands to support doctrinal requirements, mobilization, and deployments under normal and surge conditions.

The SRP includes the Integrated Training Area Management (ITAM) program. The ITAM program provides Army range officers with the capability to repair and maintain training and testing land by integrating mission requirements with environmental requirements and sound land management practices (Army Regulation 350-19, 30 August 2005). Under the ITAM program, Fort Benning monitors and maintains all training lands to ensure their long-term viability while minimizing environmental impacts.

The EIS will analyze three distinct location alternatives on Fort Benning, as well as the No Action Alternative. The alternatives proposed for analysis include:

1. Northern Mounted Maneuver Training Area (NMMTA) Alternative: This alternative includes approximately 4,723 acres and is located adjacent to and east of the current Northern Maneuver Training Area (NMTA) and west of the nearby Digital Multi-Purpose Range Complex (DMPRC).
2. Red Diamond Alternative: This alternative includes approximately 3,743 acres and is located south of the Southern Maneuver Training Area (SMTA) on the Installation's southern boundary.
3. Eastern Boundary Alternative: This alternative includes approximately 2,405 acres and is located between the Kilo impact area and the Installation's eastern boundary.

The Army will also analyze the No Action Alternative, which will evaluate the impacts of taking no action to develop an additional off-road maneuver training area on Fort Benning. The alternatives to be analyzed in the EIS may change as the Army considers the input received as part of the public scoping process.

Yes. All interested members of the public, including Tribal, Federal, State, and local agencies, will be invited to participate in the scoping process for the EIS. The scoping process will help identify key issues of concern and potential environmental impacts to be analyzed. The public will have 30 days from the publication of the Notice of Intent (NOI) in the Federal Register to submit public scoping comments.

The Army will also hold a public scoping meeting to receive comments on this proposal. The meeting will be held in the vicinity of Fort Benning and will be well publicized in local media prior to the event. Following public scoping, the public and interested parties will have 45 days to comment on the Draft EIS, once it is published.

Public scoping comments on the Proposed Action may be addressed to Mr. John Brown, Fort Benning Environmental Management Division. Mr. Brown may be contacted by phone at (706) 545-7549 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. EST. Written comments may be mailed to: Fort Benning Environmental Management Division, Attn: NEPA Program Manager, 6650 Meloy Drive, Building 6, Room 309, Fort Benning, Georgia 31905-5122, or emailed here

Public scoping comments will be accepted for 30 days following the publication of the NOI in the Federal Register to help the Army better understand and address public concerns. The anticipated completion timeframes for the Draft and Final EIS are approximately April 2020 and January 2021, respectively, although these are subject to change.

The public will have at least 45 days to review and comment on the Draft EIS and at least 30 days to review and comment on the Final EIS; the Army will hold a public meeting during the Draft EIS 45-day review period.

The Army's development of the HOMMTA could take several years from the completion of the EIS. The Army will be in a better position to explain the timelines more clearly, as well as its path forward, at the conclusion of the NEPA process when a final decision is made and publicized within the Record of Decision (ROD).

Army installations generally do not have surplus maneuver training land and are already being fully utilized. Transporting equipment and Soldiers to another installation to conduct field training takes away time from already compressed training schedules, and incurs substantial costs. Transporting Fort Benning Soldiers and/or units elsewhere to conduct maneuver training would also be prohibitively expensive, on the order of up to hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

Fort Benning will continue to be a responsible member of the surrounding communities and a dependable steward of the environment. Impacts from the Proposed Acton that could affect neighboring property and landowners will be analyzed during the EIS process.

The Army will be better able to address this concern as these analyses are completed. Based on an initial review by the Army, potential impacts to off-Post areas would be limited, and may include fugitive dust, increased sedimentation, and minor noise effects.

The Army would avoid or reduce adverse impacts through best management practices and mitigation measures, which will be identified in the EIS and ROD. To control sedimentation leaving the Installation, the Army would apply lessons learned from the GHMTA, comply with National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) requirements, implement the ITAM program, retain protective buffers around surface waters where feasible, and conduct other similar measures.

No. Live-fire training would not take place on the proposed HOMMTA.

The average daily training load for the MCoE is approximately 15,210 (FY18, MCoE G3) Soldiers. In addition to that load, tenant units, including the 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, Task Force 1-28 Infantry, 14th Combat Support Hospital and elements of the 75th Ranger Regiment, are training to meet deployment readiness standards.

The combined total annual training throughput is approximately 66,829 (FY18, MCoE G3) Soldiers, plus a variable number of Navy, Marine, and Air Force personnel. Fort Benning trains approximately 24% (FY18, MCoE G3) of all Initial Entry Training Soldiers in the Army, as well as most Army Lieutenants, Captains, and Non-Commissioned Officers.

A wide range of environmental resource areas including, but not limited to, land use, aesthetics, air quality, noise, geology and soils, water resources, biological resources, cultural resources, socioeconomics and environmental justice, traffic and transportation, utilities, hazardous and toxic materials/waste, and cumulative environmental effects will be analyzed in the EIS.

Additional resources and conditions may be identified as a result of the scoping process. The Army anticipates that the EIS may identify potentially significant impacts to water resources, biological resources, cultural resources, and potentially other resource areas if no mitigation were included.

However, the EIS will identify potential mitigation measures to reduce adverse impacts. For example, mitigation measures may be needed to protect water quality from the impact of sediment resulting from the removal of vegetation during the development and use of the HOMMTA.

Fort Benning has completed several EISs and Environmental Assessments (EAs) in the recent past. Through these prior NEPA processes, Fort Benning has developed a robust Distribution List of over 125 potentially interested stakeholders.

These stakeholders will be notified directly when the NOI is published. The NOI will be published in the Federal Register, local newspapers, the Fort Benning website (http://www.benning.army.mil/Garrison/DPW/EMD/Legal.html), and on various media via press releases. The availability of the Draft and Final EISs will be similarly announced. The Distribution List will be updated throughout the process to include additional interested stakeholders wishing to be notified.

The management of Fort Benning's lands will not change as a result of this proposal. Fort Benning will continue to work with the local community to maximize hunting and other recreational opportunities that are compatible with Fort Benning's need to meet Soldier training requirements. Recreational use will be studied as a part of the EIS.

In developing the Proposed Action, the Army considered current throughput, training requirements, environmental considerations, current land uses, and other components in identifying the three proposed alternatives. The Proposed Action will address current and anticipated future training requirements; however, Fort Benning cannot state with certainty that additional land will not also be required in the future.

Fort Benning has completed several EISs and Environmental Assessments (EAs) in the recent past. Through these prior NEPA processes, Fort Benning has developed a robust Distribution List of over 125 potentially interested stakeholders. These stakeholders will be notified directly when the NOI is published.

The NOI will be published in the Federal Register, local newspapers, the Fort Benning website (http://www.benning.army.mil/Garrison/DPW/EMD/Legal.html), and on various media via press releases. The availability of the Draft and Final EISs will be similarly announced. The Distribution List will be updated throughout the process to include additional interested stakeholders wishing to be notified.