City to meet with BLM over annexation furor

Monday, July 30, 2001 | 10:24 a.m.

A huge expansion in the northwest proposed by the city of Las Vegas will be discussed Tuesday during a meeting of city and Bureau of Land Management officials.

The meeting will give both sides a chance to discuss concerns raised by the BLM, which last week rejected the proposed annexation of 80 square miles of federally owned property under the authority of Clark County.

The annexation, as proposed, would double the physical size of Las Vegas. Mayor Oscar Goodman and other city officials say the annexation is necessary to provide growing room for Las Vegas, which is otherwise landlocked by other municipal governments and restricted federal uses.

Environmentalists said they would attend the meeting to protest the proposed annexation.

"Let's not worry about making Las Vegas bigger, let's worry about making Las Vegas better," said Jane Feldman, conservation committee co-chairwoman for the local branch of the Sierra Club.

Elizabeth Meinhold, who lives near the affected area at U.S. 95 and Durango Road, said it's time to put the brakes on developers.

"We cannot cement the entire valley," she said. "They've let them (developers) do whatever they want. Now they want to go to what's left of the valley and wipe out whatever's left."

Doug Selby, deputy city manager, said annexation doesn't mean development as the land would remain under federal control.

Selby said the city doesn't want to do anything that would endanger the county's multi-species habitat conservation plan or air quality plans, federally mandated plans to preserve environmental quality.

Phil Guerrero, BLM spokesman, said his agency understands the difference between annexation and development but still has some serious concerns about the way the city started the annexation controversy -- a letter to the bureau simply asking for the property.

The goal of the BLM would be to respect federal law, which says that broad cooperation and consultation among all affected agencies, parties and even landowners will be ongoing before any significant change will be considered.

"We already know that any annexation that would go into the Desert National Wildlife Refuge would be illegal," Guerrero said.

The wildlife refuge, a point of concern for environmentalists, is controlled by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and is an integral part of plans to protect threatened or endangered species, such as the desert tortoise.

But Guerrero said the discussion with the city Tuesday could be productive.

"We're going back to ground zero at this point," he said.