Public purchase of LV Wash lands urged

Thursday, Nov. 19, 1998 | 11:13 a.m.

Sensitive lands in the Las Vegas Wash should be a high priority for purchase with funds from public land sales in order to protect water quality and encourage development of a wetlands park, a local group said.

The Friends of the Desert Wetlands Park voted unanimously Wednesday to endorse making sensitive lands in the Las Vegas Wash available for purchase or exchange outside the growth boundary set in recent legislation.

Friends Chairman Jack Harvey said he will send a letter to the Bureau of Land Management and Clark County to remind the government agencies that the land in the wash needs to be protected.

Without restoring the wetlands, Southern Nevada's drinking water, delivered six miles downstream of the wash, is threatened with a host of contaminants including toxic pesticides, insecticides, endocrine disrupters, the rocket fuel booster perchlorate and radiation.

Informal talks are taking place between the BLM, the county and the cities to develop a process to sell the lands. The Friends group plans to be part of this early process.

"We need to be visible in the process," said Friends member Lois Sagel, who served on the public lands task force that produced the successful bill.

The Friends group decided Sagel will represent it as the BLM sets a procedure for auctioning or exchanging the lands over the next year.

"The public must be involved in every step of the process," Sagel said.

The Friends is a non-profit, 450-member citizen group that is working to preserve and protect the water quality and the few wetlands remaining after the valley's runoff invades the wash from surface and groundwater.

The proposed sale of 27,000 acres of public land in Southern Nevada is the result of federal legislation signed into law by President Clinton in September. A timetable has not been set for selling off the federal properties in the Las Vegas Valley.

The Friends group also included the valley's watershed areas outside the sales boundary to protect the available public land from flash floods. All drainage areas end up in the Las Vegas Wash.

The BLM and other federal agencies, Clark County and private owners each own a third of the 1,800 acres available in the wash, said Bruce Sillitoe, principal environmental planner for the county.

The county is planning to build a wetlands park and help restore cattail marshes that once spanned 2,000 acres across the eastern side of the valley. Today the wetlands accounts for less than 200 acres as growth and floodwaters have wreaked havoc on the marshes that once cleaned drinking water, offered wildlife sanctuary and bird watchers a quiet observation spot.

The county is expected to buy about 160 acres of privately owned land in the wash, Stillitoe said, totaling an estimated $1.5 million. But that leaves many acres vulnerable to development in one of the fastest growing areas in the nation.