Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Halt to Western land swaps sought

On the heels of a new report that says the federal government has been cheated in Western land swaps, U.S. Rep. George Miller has called for a halt to all similar land exchanges.

But Nevada's senators say a new federal land sales program just getting started in the Las Vegas Valley can solve the problem.

Miller called for an immediate moratorium Wednesday on all land exchanges involving the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service based on an investigation into such swaps in Nevada and other Western states from 1989 to 1999. Officials of the agencies had not seen the letter late Wednesday.

The California Democrat based his concerns on a new General Accounting Office report released Wednesday. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, found that the two agencies allowed exchanges of private land valued at an average of $780 per acre to be traded for federal land valued at an average $1,415.

The GAO cited the Forest Service land exchanges of Deer Creek Canyon in the Spring Mountains in 1995 and another in Red Rock Canyon in 1994. The service overvalued the private land for exchange in those two deals, shorting the government $8.8 million, the GAO concluded.

In another case, the BLM estimated the value of land traded to a private property owner in Clark County at $763,000. The unidentified owner sold the land the same day it was received for $4.6 million.

"We believe the exchanges presented in our report demonstrate serious, substantive and continuing problems with the agencies' land exchange programs," the GAO report concludes.

A halt to land trades would affect only two deals in Nevada: a proposal to trade 1,200 acres of federal land near Lake Las Vegas for acreage near Red Rock Canyon and the Mount Charleston Recreation Area, and a swap of 241 acres near Railroad Pass in exchange for 1,646 acres near the Ruby Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Northern Nevada.

"As of right now, it is only a recommendation by Rep. Miller of California," BLM spokesman Philip Guerrero said. "If the departments of Interior and Agriculture said OK, that would put them in jeopardy, but the departments said they would oppose it."

In Nevada, the BLM discontinued the exchanges in 1996 at the request of the county and then-U.S. Rep. John Ensign, R-Nev. At the time, the BLM had a backlog of 900 request for land transactions, Guerrero said. Five trades considered the top priority were exempted, and only the Lake Las Vegas and Railroad Pass transactions remain.

Now land swaps in the state have been replaced by outright purchases through the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act of 1998.

And that could become a national model, Sens. Richard Bryan and Harry Reid, both D-Nev., said.

Instead of exchanging public lands for environmentally sensitive parcels, a fund is created through the sale of Bureau of Land Management property in the urban Las Vegas Valley. That money is used to pay landowners the fair market value for their parcels of environmentally sensitive land. A private trust doing the bargaining for the Interior Department agencies in the first round of purchases.

"It solves the problem by not doing any more land exchanges," Bryan's spokesman David Lemmon said.

"That's the reason the act was written," Reid's spokesman David Cherry said.

The senators agreed that there had been problems with land exchanges in the past, such as those in Nevada cited by the GAO.

"We think the way we've done it in Nevada is the perfect model," Lemmon said.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt came to Las Vegas on July 5 to announce the first 11 private land parcels available for a buyout. The list includes land both in the northern and southern ends of the state.

The $33 million became available after two auctions of BLM land in urban Las Vegas. Over the next year, another two land auctions will be scheduled, including more than 7,500 acres available in North Las Vegas.

Up to $500 million is expected from such BLM auctions to buy lands for preservation and conservation.

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