Big Springs safe from U.S. 95 expansion, official says

Thursday, Jan. 8, 1998 | 10:44 a.m.

Widening U.S. 95 has put state transportation official Kent Cooper between a rock and a hard place.

On one hand, elected officials and northwest valley residents want a 10-lane expressway to handle 30,000 more cars daily on top of the 120,000 using the present six lanes. And they want it done now, not in 15 years.

On the other hand, Cooper is hearing from a growing group of concerned citizens who don't want to see a historical site paved over. Settlers came to the Las Vegas Valley because of the water found at Big Springs which runs south of U.S. 95 between Rancho Drive and Valley View Boulevard.

As project development manager for the Nevada Department of Transportation, Cooper said he's trying to find a way to expand the highway and save the site so the Las Vegas Valley Water District can preserve the springs and build an educational park.

"The department has no intention of taking the Big Springs site," Cooper said Wednesday during a meeting of the Friends of Big Springs at the West Charleston Library.

Then why consider paving Big Springs at all? Cooper said the Federal Highway Administration requires that all alternatives be put on the table. And since the south edge of the table includes Big Springs, it has to be considered as potentially being placed under asphalt.

Nevada State Historic Preservation Officer Ron James said the state has already ordered NDOT to trim its plans to excavate Big Springs. Rather than digging 39 trenches or more if anything significant was found, NDOT has to submit a more conservative plan. Consultant Roger Patton of Louis Berger & Associates said the plan could be ready as early as next week.

James said by sticking to strict excavation rules, the historic preservation office has already saved the taxpayers money. "Somebody in this room would have sued NDOT over that (the original) plan," he said.

In fact, the people of Las Vegas, not federal officials or NDOT, can help decide how to widen the expressway, either by removing 60 tract homes on the north or paving over the trickle left of Big Springs, Cooper said.

NDOT is preparing an environmental impact statement that must consider every alternative, including a road running through Big Springs. As it stands, the preferred solution would remove the homes on the north of the highway.

The homes run along the expressway between Jones Boulevard and Rancho Drive. Some 114 apartments are located between Torrey Pines Drive and Jones. Twenty-one businesses are clustered near Jones and between Rancho and Martin Luther King Boulevard.

If transportation officials decide to take the water district's property, however, every citizen in the valley could feel the pinch in future water rate increases after three major supply wells and their pipelines are moved.

In addition to the modern wells, the ancient site may have hosted people at the springs up to 7,000 years ago.

There's also bear-claw poppy, burrowing owls and peregrine falcons that call Big Springs home and are endangered or threatened.