Editorial: Environment wins

Friday, Oct. 31, 2003 | 8:53 a.m.

Earlier this week Interior Secretary Gale Norton detailed how her department will spend $385 million that has been raised by the sale of federal lands in Southern Nevada. Of this amount, $156 million will be used to develop and protect parks, trails and natural areas in Southern Nevada. Another $118 million will be spent on improvements at the Red Rock National Conservation Area, the Desert National Wildlife Refuge and the Lake Mead and Spring Mountain national recreation areas. And $111 million will buy almost 90,000 acres of environmentally sensitive land that is privately owned (most of it in Northern Nevada), so the lands can be turned over to the federal government to prevent their development.

The Interior Department's plans are possible because in 1998 Congress passed the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act. Previously, land swaps involving federal and private lands were common in Southern Nevada, but too often the public land that went to private developers was undervalued by government-appointed appraisers. So in an effort to get the most money for these lands, the federal law required that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management property be sold at public auctions. Equally as important, the proceeds from the sales of these public lands stay in Nevada and are spent almost entirely for environmental uses.

With about 80 percent of the land in Southern Nevada owned by the U.S. government, the beauty of this law is twofold: Las Vegas can continue to grow through the sale of coveted federal land in the valley, and an ongoing funding source has been created to purchase environmentally sensitive lands in the state and build more parks and improve national conservation areas located in Southern Nevada. It's one of those rare instances where environmentalists and developers have found common ground.