Historic lawn at the center of controversy

Beth Slovic

Thursday, July 8, 2004 | 8:42 a.m.

Public comments on the Bureau of Reclamation's proposal are being accepted until Friday. Call 293-8448 or e-mail relandscape@lc.usbr.gov to submit a comment.

Perhaps only in Nevada could grass be considered a piece of history, but a verdant knoll at the center of Boulder City has earned that designation.

And now it has become a battleground between the forces of historic preservation and water conservation.

A group of residents is protesting a plan by the Bureau of Reclamation, the agency that doles out the Colorado River water, to tear out more than 18,000 square feet of lush grass at its downtown headquarters and put in desert landscaping, complete with rocks.

The idea is to save water as Southern Nevada grinds through its fifth year of drought.

Symbolically it is much more than that.

To several local residents, the contested patch of grass represents Boulder City's past as a desert oasis in the back yard of Hoover Dam. It's living proof of the manmade miracle that the dam created in the Southwest nearly 70 years ago.

It also happens to be within the boundaries of Boulder City's historic district, meaning it is subject to the protection of the the National Historic Preservation Act.

The residents say the lawn has a history worth preserving.

To representatives of the Bureau of Reclamation, the agency that owns the land where the grass grows, the 70,000-square-foot green expanse represents a senseless waste of water in a time of serious drought. It's a bad example for the agency responsible for distributing the river's water to use more than a fair share.

"We are a water management agency," Bob Walsh, a spokesman for the bureau's Boulder City office, said. "In this time of drought it makes perfect sense to reduce our water use along with everyone else.

"This is something that any responsible water manager should be doing," he said.

That reasoning doesn't wash with Barbara Adams, a Boulder City resident who says she is concerned about the Bureau of Reclamation's xeriscaping.

"The federal government was trying to build an image here ... the landscaping is part of its (the city's) historical significance," Adams said.

"We don't have all those 200-year-old Victorian buildings here, but what we do have is the story of the people who came to this land and the building of the dam," Adams said.

That grass "is part of our history and the bureau's history," she said. A compromise is possible, Walsh said. The bureau can both conserve water and preserve history by removing only the grass that is not visible from the street, he said.

That is what Walsh said the agency plans to do, and it expects to save as much as 100,000 gallons of water a month.

That doesn't convince some residents.

"There's a fine balance between the historical value of a property and today's reality of dealing with a lack of water," said Mimi Rodden, a resident who wants to preserve the grass. "It's not a small issue. It's a very serious issue."

Rodden would like to err on the side of caution when it comes to disturbing the city's pastoral history. There are other ways to save water that don't threaten the city's history and tourism, she said.

Removing the grass does require consultation with the state historic preservation office, and the Bureau of Reclamation is taking public comments on the proposal until Friday.

Still, the heated debate is not just about the grass, Hal Rothman, a professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said. It's also about the evolving mission of the Bureau of Reclamation, an agency that used to be a huge money-maker for political bosses in the West, Rothman said.

"The bureau used to stand for reclamation, but cynics now say it stands for recreation," he said.

The changing nature of how the government produces power has also forced the bureau to reconsider what it does, Rothman said.

No new dams have been built in years, he noted, leaving the bureau as merely the custodian of the federal government's dam projects.

"They're caught between a rock and a hard place; they've lost the cache of their powerful years," Rothman said. Now the mission is to be a good steward.