County to honor savior of Las Vegas Wash in ceremony today

Friday, Nov. 8, 2002 | 3:22 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION: Nov. 9, 2002

When Vern Bostick came to Southern Nevada in 1972, it was to study plants and animals around the Nevada Test Site, where the United States experimented with nuclear weapons.

But his scientific curiosity and love of research led him to examine water in the desert, and now he is considered a leader in protecting Southern Nevada's scarce desert wetlands.

A four-month research project in the Las Vegas Wash started Bostick into a lifelong pursuit to save the marshes and wetlands being eroded by treated wastewater and frequent flash floods flowing across the Las Vegas Valley.

And save them he did.

In 1972 Bostick spent January through April on contract with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, assessing the 12-mile-long wash. The Las Vegas Valley was just beginning to see a population explosion.

By 1974 he became a member of the new Las Vegas Wash Development Committee, coordinating efforts for a statewide parks bond that would eventually save the wash.

Those who were side by side with him exploring the wash agree that Bostick never gave up the fight to save the wetlands.

The County Parks and Community Services Department will honor Bostick with a monument to his achievements to be unveiled at 10 this morning at a pond renamed "Vern's Pond," said Jeff Harris of the parks services. The Wetlands Park Visitor Center is off Broadbent Boulevard east of Boulder Highway.

"We wanted to honor him as a person, not a politician," Harris said. "We refer to Vern as both the Lewis and the Clark of the Las Vegas Wash."

A grove of cottonwood trees with benches for resting and contemplating nature as well as a bronze plaque will be placed at the pond, Harris said.

"It's about time," said Norma Cox, who with the League of Women Voters joined Bostick's battle to save the wash in the late 1970s. "He spent a lot of time fighting for it."

The fight has continued for decades. Only 10 years ago the future of wetlands in Southern Nevada was not bright.

"He made so many politicians angry along the way," Cox said of Bostick's frequent appearances before the Clark County Commission, the Nevada Environmental Commission and other water boards.

Bostick said that on his first visit he discovered nearly 2,000 acres of robust wetlands, 1,500 of them cattail marshes, when he plunged into the green ribbon threading across the eastern edge of Las Vegas.

Over the years the wash has collected treated sewage, valley runoff and ground water from the entire region, sending it into Lake Mead.

All of those flows have eroded the wash, cutting the channel up to a foot deeper every year and taking the plant life into the lake with them, Bostick said.

Treatment plants face a growing problem of freeing drinking water of harmful chemicals and bacteria, but Bostick says a properly functioning wetlands can help with the job.

"Those contaminants got there from the Las Vegas Wash," Bostick said. "We need the wetlands to remove what those treatment plants can't do."

Fortunately, the county, Southern Nevada Water Authority, the Las Vegas Valley Water District, the county Sanitation District, federal and state environmental agencies teamed up to save the wash in the mid-1990s.

Today Bostick can see the fruit of his scientific labors as Clark County builds a 2,900-acre wetlands park and hundreds of volunteers clean up the garbage in the wash every year.

Bostick, 88, said he has watched over the decades as the wetlands shrunk to less than 200 acres.

"Sometimes it seemed nobody listened," he said. "They could have been stopped very easily, but nobody was interested."

County estimates put the final price tag for finishing the wetlands park at more than $100 million today.

"It's awful expensive now," Bostick said of the multimillion-dollar effort to rebuild the marshes.