County ready to talk about growth

Monday, Jan. 26, 2004 | 11:04 a.m.

Clark County is close to launching a formal discussion about growth, people close to the County Commission confirmed Friday.

County officials, including County Manager Thom Reilly and spokesman Erik Pappa, declined to provide details about the proposal, now under discussion by county management and commissioners.

"Nothing has been finalized," Pappa said. "We're looking at the issue of growth and we may have some announcement in time for the state of the county address Feb. 3."

Commissioners Bruce Woodbury and Rory Reid, two voices who have expressed concern about the rapid pace of growth in the Las Vegas metropolitan region, declined to comment on the proposal.

Other commissioners did not immediately return phone calls.

Clark County has consistently been a national leader in the pace of growth for an urban county of its size. The county grew 4.6 percent between July 2002 and July 2003 to about 1.6 million residents, according to recently released figures from the state demographer. Annually, about 70,000 people are moving to the area.

The county's growth has pushed the state's growth rate to 4.1 percent, the highest in the nation. With the growth has come jobs, political power and economic clout.

But the growth also brings headaches. Last year, Clark County added 25,000 homes, and those homes demand infrastructure, services and land.

Friction on land-use and related issues has become a political football throughout the region. The county commission has served or is serving as a referee on such issues as the size of a planned casino in Summerlin, the routes and bases for tour helicopters, to name just a few.

Another resource affected by rapid growth is water.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority has successfully brought water to the growing population for a decade, but now is approaching the limits of how much it can draw from Lake Mead -- a particularly troubling issue in a time of wide regional drought that has sent lake levels plummeting.

A chorus of voices ranging from business and homeowners vexed with new water restrictions to unions historically at odds with the home-building industry have called for a moratorium or restriction on new home construction. Few, however, have suggested that the construction of new, water-intensive casinos, the source of the region's main economic strength and tens of thousands of jobs yearly, end.

The water authority plans to release a study on the economic effects of limits to growth next month, said water authority General Manager Pat Mulroy. Mulroy said she welcomes consideration of growth-related issues by her counterparts at the county.

Although growth would be impossible without water, the water authority and the regional distributors are charged with delivering the resource to the homes and businesses that sprout up in the desert.

Growth "is not a water issue. It's a land use issue," Mulroy said. "That's the appropriate place for the discussion to take place."

An economic analysis of the limits to growth was commissioned last year by the water authority board, which is made up of elected representatives from the county and the region's cities, last year. Mulroy said that analysis should come out in February and might aid a discussion on growth.

"I think that's a great discussion to have," she said. "It shouldn't be at the water authority."

The possibility of a dialogue on growth issues received a strong endorsement from Jane Feldman, an activist with the local arm of the Sierra Club. The group has weighed in on many growth-related issues, including last year's proposal to build thousands of homes on top of Blue Diamond Hill near the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.

The Sierra Club and other similarly oriented national and local groups have become increasingly concerned about the impact the spreading urban area has on environmentally fragile desert areas.

Feldman said it is important to talk not only about what the limits to growth might be, but the way the area is growing.

"I would love to hear a dialogue about what smart growth might look like, and what kind of vision we could come up with for an exciting, efficient, comfortable and convenient urban lifestyle we could have here," Feldman said. "If we had conversations like that we would probably be limiting our growth but it would just feel like the comfortable thing to do."

Another group that has historically opposed limits to growth, and welcomed freeing up federal land surrounding the urban area for private development, said any conversation should include developers, an industry that is second only to gaming in terms of economic and political clout in the region. Construction is estimated to directly provide about 75,000 jobs in Las Vegas.

"We would appreciate inclusion in any discussion about growth," said Monica Caruso, a spokeswoman for the Southern Nevada Home Builders Association. Caruso said she had not heard about the county proposal.