Wednesday, June 16, 2004 | 11:08 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- A bill introduced today that allows Lincoln County to benefit from the sale of 87,000 acres of federal land within its boundaries also paves the way for Clark County to build a network of pipelines to transport water from the rural area for urban use.
The new Lincoln County lands bill, introduced in the House and Senate today, authorizes the auction of 87,000 acres of federal land adjacent to private property in Lincoln County with a new formula on how profits could be used with an eye toward building outdoor tourism.
The bill also creates 256-mile and 192-mile corridors for the Southern Nevada Water Authority and the Lincoln County Water District respectively.
If found to satisfy environmental laws, it would create a right-of-way for a road, pipeline, or infrastructure needed to build a water pipeline network in Clark and Lincoln counties, a plan that has not been well received in Lincoln County.
The bill makes clear that it does not change any water rights, which still remain under the control of the Nevada State Engineer.
Pat Mulroy, chief of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, has told Clark County officials that, despite the drought, there is no shortage of water because the authority holds water rights in the rural counties.
The State Engineer must decide whether there is enough water available to allow Clark County to pipe supplies south.
The lands bill does not give either agency title to the land in the corridor. Any pipeline that would be built there would be built underground and BLM could still use the land for other purposes, according to staff members of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said this could "speed up" a water conveyance between the counties, but stressed that it does not change anything related to water rights. He said it was done in cooperation with the county and public meetings would be held in Lincoln County before anything would be done. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said it was "good resource planning for the state," since the water reservoir Lincoln County could be used in the future. But Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., emphasized that water rights are, and always will be, a state issue and an environmental impact statement would have to be done before the right of way would be granted. "This is only dealing with the federal land acess," Gibbons said.
The bill creates an off-road vehicle trail that would be managed by the Bureau of Land Management in an effort to build the county's outdoor tourism industry and would have the BLM develop a multi-species habitat conservation plan and a plan to protect archaeological resources.
Forty-five percent of the proceeds would go to Lincoln County to develop parks, trails and natural areas with an eye to developing its tourism industry further.
Five percent of the sale proceeds would fund the state's schools, and the rest would be used for administrative costs. The new formula does not allow the proceeds to be used by the federal government to buy environmentally sensitive lands.
The bill specifies what land to use "instead of looking at every alternative in the world." There are still 13,341 acres of federal land waiting to be auctioned under the previous version of the Lincoln County Lands Act, passed in 2000. It must be auctioned within 75 days, according to the new bill.
Once sold, all of the land would double the amount of private land in the county, but only decrease the percentage of land owned by the federal government in county from 97 percent to 96 percent.
Reid called the bill a "legislative work of art" because it involved so much work to help the county's 3,700 people.
"This is really going to help the poorest county we have in Nevada," Reid said, pointing to his "favorite map" of the county showing the white slivers of private land in among the large black blotch of federal land in the county.
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