Two years ago, a remarkable coalition formed in rural
central Nevada to halt the spread of Navy war games on public
lands. Low-flying jets and the military’s hunger for land
withdrawals spurred the Sierra Club, the Nevada Cattlemen’s
Association, People for the USA, and almost every level of
government – from local land-use boards to the governor’s office –
to support a Bureau of Land Management plan that would have
contained all future electronic warfare installations in one area,
the 400,000-acre Dixie Valley.
This August,
however, the national BLM angered just about everyone on the high
desert when it opened the door for “threat emitters’ to be
installed outside the Dixie Valley. Threat emitters are electronic
devices that simulate missiles for training jets to
dodge.
“We went through everything right …
everyone agreed,” says Ray Salisbury, a Navy veteran who chairs the
Lander County public-lands advisory committee. “Then somebody in
Washington changed things, just like that.”
John
Singlaub, a BLM manager in Carson City, Nev., understands this
sense of betrayal. He cobbled together the 1996 agreement
restricting the Navy, only to be overridden this summer by his
superiors in Washington. This is just another example of the
military treating Nevada like an occupied country, he says,
applying pressure to get what it wants without seriously
considering local sentiment.
BLM spokeswoman Jo
Simpson contends the upcoming environmental review necessary for
the threat-emitter sites will allow the public “to address
comprehensively the Navy’s training requirements that affect public
lands in Nevada.”
Grace Potorti, executive
director for the Rural Alliance for Military Accountability (HCN,
4/13/98), finds little comfort in the BLM’s assurances that
environmental review will equal citizen concerns being taken
seriously. She vows to fight this one to the end. “They say it
ain’t over until the fat lady sings,” says Potorti, “and I don’t
sing.”
* Stanley
Yung
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Top gun seeks more of the high desert.
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