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It’s looking doubtful that Fort Lewis will become the new home of a Stryker brigade that is training in Hawaii.
An independent military analyst said the Army wants to keep the 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii, and an Army official acknowledged that stationing a fourth Stryker brigade at Fort Lewis is problematic.
The Army is looking at brigade locations outside Hawaii as the result of a court decision in a lawsuit filed by environmental groups. The Army is required to examine other sites and prove that Hawaii is the best-suited, in terms of the environment, for the site. The examination is aimed at backing up claims the Army made in an environmental impact statement that it conducted before choosing the Hawaii site.
This work likely will reinforce the Army’s initial decision, said John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, an online resource for military information.
“They may have failed to dot their I’s and cross their T’s for their environmental assessment, but they sure had some internal analysis of alternatives that led them to Hawaii. They didn’t just pull it out of a hat,” he said.
In late January, the Army began holding meetings to gather public comment about moving the brigade to Fort Lewis. No residents attended the final planned meeting, held in Lakewood last week.
Paul Thies, chief of environmental planning for U.S. Army Environmental Command, said Fort Lewis and the Hawaii post couldn’t simply exchange brigades. If the brigade were moved to Fort Lewis, the Army would want a light-infantry brigade to move to Hawaii, he said. Fort Lewis doesn’t have a light-infantry brigade available for such a move.
“We’d have to put a fourth unit here and go to one unit in Hawaii,” Thies said. “That’s the dilemma we’re in.”