by Tony Perry

POTRERO, Calif. - With its isolation and rustic ambience, this sparsely populated hamlet in eastern San Diego County offers the privacy and quiet its residents crave."It's perfect: nobody here but us rural souls," Will Lee said as he headed to the Potrero General Store.

But Lee's solitude and sense of being far from the crowd may soon be ruffled.

Blackwater USA, a security company that supplies hundreds of armed civilian personnel for duties in Iraq, is seeking to build a 220-acre training camp on an 800-acre parcel that now is dedicated to egg farming and cattle ranching. [1]

Blackwater officials say they would like to use the land to train personnel for duty in Iraq, Afghanistan and anywhere else the Department of Defense needs help. Plans include firing ranges, a helicopter pad, a mock "combat town," a track for high-speed driving classes, classrooms, an armory, a bunkhouse and some administrative buildings.

Land-use disputes in the county's rural areas are common. Nearly every season sees a slow-growth initiative on the ballot. In nearby Jamul, residents are fuming about plans for an Indian casino and hotel.

Activists united

The Blackwater dispute has brought together a coalition not often seen locally: rural residents, environmental activists and urban peaceniks. They are making common cause to convince the county Board of Supervisors to keep Blackwater out of the backcountry.

Carol Jahnkow, executive director of the Peace Resource Center of San Diego, said the last time the peace and environmental movements were aligned was during a fight in the 1980s to keep the Navy from stationing nuclear-powered carriers in San Diego Bay.

That fight was not successful. Last week, the Navy announced that a third carrier, the Carl Vinson, is going to San Diego.

This battle will be different, Jahnkow said, because it coincides with anger over U.S. involvement in Iraq and the Bush administration's environmental policies.

"The coalition is building. All the players are coming to the table," Jahnkow said. "We recognize that this proposal has to be fought on so many different levels."

The wheels of the state-mandated environmental review turn slowly. The matter is not expected to reach the supervisors for two years. Still, opposition is at the boiling point.

Last Thursday, county planners held a state-mandated "scoping session" to outline the review process. Such sessions usually are pro forma, done quickly and with little fuss.

For the Blackwater scoping session, at least 200 protesters lined the streets outside the county's Department of Planning and Land Use building in San Diego.

Three dozen San Diego police and county sheriff's deputies were on hand. One deputy thought it necessary to wear an extra belt of ammunition across his chest.

Ivan Haller, the county's deputy planning director, said the law enforcement presence was in response to a threat. "That's all I'm prepared to say," he said.

Protesters who attended the meeting were sent through a metal detector, a process that delayed the start by 45 minutes. The meeting was spirited but not disrupted by their presence.

Other support

Outside, motorists including garbage-truck drivers and office workers honked their horns in apparent support of the protesters carrying signs blasting Blackwater, the Bush administration and U.S. involvement in Iraq.

Protesters are convinced the public is on their side.

"The Blackwater company is just one of the worst excesses of the Bush administration co-opting contractors to wage wars," said David Wiley, an insurance salesman who is a Coast Guard veteran and member of the local Veterans for Peace group.

"We don't need private armies: It's the end of America," said Z Kripke, a member of Code Pink, a feminist antiwar group. "I don't want them here."

Founded in 1997, the North Carolina-based Blackwater USA specializes in training private security guards and law enforcement personnel at its facilities in Moyock, N.C., about 220 miles south of Washington, D.C., and Mount Carroll in northwestern Illinois. Potrero would be its first facility in the West.

Blackwater is one of numerous private security companies under contract to the Pentagon to provide a range of services in Iraq, including guarding convoys and high-ranking officials.

March 31, 2004, four Blackwater employees were dragged from their vehicle and killed by a mob in Al-Fallujah. Their burned bodies were hanged from a bridge. The pictures horrified the White House and prompted President Bush to order an assault on the city.
Copyright © 2007 Infoshop News