Sierra Club criticizes area’s handling of sprawl

Tuesday, Oct. 5, 1999 | 9:58 a.m.

The Sierra Club released a national ranking of the states Monday that gave relatively low marks to Nevada for dealing with the effects of urban sprawl.

The national environmental organization ranked the states on four criteria: open space protection, land use planning, transportation planning and community revitalization.

The Sierra Club has made sprawl and "smart growth" a national and statewide priority. The organization has held three meetings in Southern Nevada over the last month on smart growth, with two more to come.

One of the principal concerns of the organization is transportation. The organization's executive director, Carl Pope, identified new road construction as a "sprawl magnet," attracting more cars and more development, contributing to air and water pollution.

Not surprisingly, Nevada -- where ambitious road-building efforts are under way, especially in the Las Vegas Valley -- fared poorly under this criteria. The Sierra Club ranked Nevada 39th out of the 50 states for transportation planning.

The organization's regional organizers have identified the construction of large "master planned communities" and the roads that serve them as significant contributors to pollution and sprawl.

The regional residential construction industry said some of the things in the national Sierra Club report don't apply to Southern Nevada. For example, the report decries the loss of farmlands -- but that isn't a big issue in Las Vegas, said Monica Caruso, public affairs director for the Southern Nevada Homebuilders Association.

Construction of master planned communities is driven by consumer demand, she said. Road construction to serve the new communities is also funded by the taxpayers and their representatives, Caruso noted.

"The development of master planned communities has been a good trend because the key word there is planned," she said. Governments and consumers also support the communities because they provide amenities, such as parks and other open spaces, that older communities don't have in abundance, she said.

Caruso said the homebuilders association also is not opposed to infill or urban areas, which the Sierra Club supports as an alternative to expansion from the city center.

The state also ranked poorly, 27th, for open space protection. It ranked better for community revitalization of urban neighborhoods -- 23rd -- and for land use planning -- 18th.

"Overall, we run to the middle to the low end of the pack," said Deanna White, Southern Nevada Sierra Club organizer.

White said she would rank Nevada even lower than the national organizer for transportation planning, among other issues.

"What it says is that we have the opportunity to do a lot more," White said. "We still have a long way to go to make Nevada a healthier, better place to live."

White, who has worked in the valley for two years, said the community is much more aware of sprawl and its negative effects than when she arrived.

She said that two years ago most people supported "growth at all costs."

"Now I think people have shifted those attitudes -- the public has," she said.

The Sierra Club's next smart-growth meeting will be at 7 tonight at the North Las Vegas Library, 2300 Civic Center Drive.