Environmentalists attempt to block Lincoln land sale

Thursday, Oct. 11, 2001 | 9:52 a.m.

Three different environmental coalitions have filed appeals to stop a planned auction of 6,400 acres of federal land near Mesquite scheduled for Friday.

The Bureau of Land Management, which received the appeals Wednesday, estimates that the land in southeastern Lincoln County could become home to more than 50,000 people. But environmentalists say the federal agency failed to provide essential information on the impact of development, particularly in regard to water issues.

Lincoln County commissioners support the sale, hoping to garner significant property taxes for the county, which is now home to fewer than 5,000 people, according to census figures.

But environmentalists and their allies fear the development could hurt native species, dry up wells used by rural land users and negatively affect the lifestyles of people living in the region.

The source of water for the development hasn't been identified, although Lincoln commissioners say it could be pumped in from other parts of the county.

Robert Hall, president of the Nevada Environmental Coalition, said the appeals are an attempt to stop the sale.

"The environmental documents are legally insufficient," Hall said. "The involvement of the public just wasn't there. We tend to get a little testy about that.

"It's typical BLM," said Hall, who has filed numerous lawsuits on environmental issues affecting Southern Nevada.

A co-appellant with Hall's group is Lincoln County Concerned Citizens.

Gene Drais, the BLM's project manager for the sale, said his office on Wednesday received two other appeals. One was from a trio of the Western Land Exchange Project, a Seattle-based group protesting federal land policy in the West; the local arm of the national Sierra Club; and the Tucson, Ariz.-based Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group focused on the protection of endangered and threatened species.

The third appeal came from the Committee for Idaho's High Desert and the Western Watersheds Project, conservation groups concerned about the impact that water diversions to the expected development would have on Western river systems.

The environmentalists want to stop the sale and force a new and thorough environmental study before it can go forward.

"This could radically change the face of Southeastern Nevada and the lifestyle out there," said Daniel Patterson, a desert ecologist for the Center for Biological Diversity and a former BLM employee. "We think it just makes sense to have a go-slow approach."

He said the appeals have significant support from Lincoln County natives, despite support of the sale from the county's elected leadership. He also said the BLM failed to analyze the sale's effect on nearby Mesquite.

"The BLM's acknowledgement that the sources of future water supply needs are unknown and assurance that possible sources will be studied in future environmental analyses is a violation" of federal law, the center's appeal said.

But Drais said the BLM fulfilled all legal requirements for the sale, and that federal law doesn't require full analyses of unknown environmental impacts.

The appeals are presented to the federal Interior Department Board of Land Use Appeals, which formally has 45 days to respond to a request to stop a land sale.

"I don't know how long it will take them," Drais said. "At this point we intend to go ahead with the sale."

Drais said even if a bid is accepted at the Friday auction, the results could be voided, if necessary, by the Interior board.

"We will be asking for an expedited review" from the board, which operates as a quasi-judicial arbitrator, he said.

Drais said the BLM has only followed the dictates of Congress, which last year directed the agency to sell off the property, including 4,800 acres by Saturday and another 8,700 acres by Oct. 13, 2005. The agency last month set the total minimum price for the land at $3.65 million.

"We have analyzed the impacts as needed," Drais said.

But some ranchers north of the proposed land sale argue that more study is needed.

"I don't see why we're selling our land to build up a bigger city of Mesquite," said Shannon Hammond, who married a rancher and moved to the Eagle Valley area, about 200 miles north of Las Vegas, more than six decades ago.

"I wonder what's going to happen to our water, our aquifers," she said. "They say it won't affect us, but anything that affects Lincoln County affects us. I don't want my ranchland dried up."