Dear HCN,
Poor Senator Harry Reid. He says
if he were king, he’d have lots of wilderness, but he had to
compromise in his recently passed Nevada “wilderness” bill (HCN,
3/3/03: The Wild Card). Fortunately, there were bright spots in the
legislation for some of Harry’s friends, who got free or
cheap land through numerous special provisions.
Matt
Jenkins covered the human interest story of Nevada wilderness
advocates’ ruminations, but the fine print of the deal bears
more scrutiny. Reid’s bill included about 27,000 acres in
outright gifts and discount sales of federal land to various
entities, and both Howard Hughes Corporation and Del Webb got
special deals folded into the bill.
Moreover, between the
1998 Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act and the recent
Reid bill, the BLM is authorized to sell (or simply give away to
local governments) about 50,000 acres of federal land in the Las
Vegas Valley. Of proceeds from land sold to developers, the BLM
gives 15 percent to local government to subsidize the schools and
infrastructure needed to match the Valley’s runaway growth.
No one seems to seriously question whether we should be
facilitating development in this desert landscape through the
wholesale privatization of public land.
Maybe I’d
feel a little better about pragmatic wilderness advocates giving
the nod to federal-land disposal to feed unsustainable development
in the Las Vegas Valley if what we got in return were real
wilderness areas. But even the land we “save” has a gift or two for
Harry’s friends, like a new highway and unknown miles of OHV
trails, both slated to cut through the Sloan Canyon National
Conservation Area — whose petroglyphs Harry says are “in
desperate need of protection.” Oops … and another nice chunk
carved out for a Del Webb development.
Matt Jenkins says,
“You can’t win big without some wheeling and dealing,” but it
looks as though you can’t win big with it, either.
Janine Blaeloch
Seattle, Washington
The writer
is director of the Western Land Exchange Project.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Read the fine print.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
