MX will be great—Mayor

Press, 25 November 1982, Page 8

MX will be great—Mayor

NZPA Cheyenne; Wyoming Down at the Chamber of Commerce, staff members were fielding telephone calls from job-seekers as far away as Hawaii. And oh Main Street businessmen could hear the ring of cash registers. “I think the MX is going to be great for Cheyenne,” said_ Bill Nation, who has served ‘ two terms as mayor of the community of 60,000 people and now manages the 72-year-old Plains Hotel. ; “After all, the military has had a 100-year relationship with the-town, back to the days of the cavalry and old Fort Carlin. I think it’s great.” • This week President

Ronald Reagan chose the remote high plains near Cheyenne as the site for the MX. It will consist of 100 nuclear-tipped missiles closely clustered in an arrangement designed to withstand nuclear attack. There are 200 Minuteman 3 ,nuclear missiles in underground silos across 17,000 sq kin 'of south-east Wyoming, south-wpst Nebraska, and northern Colorado. Nuclear missiles have been deployed in the region for 25 years. But while merchants and businessmen applauded the decision, ranchers and farmers on the snow-swept prairies of south-eastern Wyoming were wondering whether the missile system

would cost them their land. Despite 10cm of snow and icy roads, more than 50 people gathered on Tuesday night in a school cafeteria in Albin, a crossroads 60km to the north-east, to discuss what the President’s decision would mean to them. “Folks are worried,” said Linda Kirkbride, a fourthgeneration rancher who has been active in a group opposed to the missile. “This could mean their land.” No specific site has been chosen for the MX, but several hundred square kilometres of remote, rolling prairie north-east and northwest of Cheyenne have been identified on maps made .public by the United States Air Force as geologically

suitable for basing the missile system. All the land is privately owned. According to a regional planning report made public in Cheyenne, the deployment plan, informally called “dense pack” by Defence Department experts, will take about 35 sq km of land.

Headquarters for the missile will be the Francis Warren Air Force Base, on the outskirts of Cheyenne. The base is tbe command centre for Minuteman 3 missiles deployed in the area. Businessmen expect the MX to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into Cheyenne’s economy. Some say it will create 8000 construction jobs.