Conservation groups oppose Sloan heliport

Thursday, May 6, 2004 | 9:46 a.m.

Legislation introduced Tuesday to move helicopter flights over the Grand Canyon to a site near Sloan has drawn criticism from a couple of conservation groups.

Friends of Sloan Canyon, a group dedicated to protecting the Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area, and Friends of Nevada Wilderness, a group that supports making federal land in the state off limits to development, said this week that they would oppose the legislation offered by Sen. Harry Reid, Democratic whip.

The bill would take the tours now flying out of McCarran International Airport and move them near Sloan.

Similar legislation has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Nevada's members.

The Senate bill, co-sponsored by Sen. John Ensign, Reid's Republican counterpart, would satisfy residents in Las Vegas, who have fought to move helicopter flight paths away from their homes. The bill would also satisfy residents of Henderson's Anthem, because it was moved to a location two miles south of a county-owned site on Interstate 15 at Sloan originally proposed by county aviation officials.

The Henderson residents opposed the original, more northern site for the heliport because it would bring the helicopters closer to their homes.

The conservation groups, however, fear that the flights will have a significant impact on the conservation area.

"We recognize along with everybody else that there has to be a new heliport,"said Bill James, vice-president of Friends of Sloan Canyon, a year-old group modeled after the similar Friends of Red Rock group. "This bill, though, has in it provisions that have helicopters fly directly over the new wilderness area. We feel it will destroy it for hiking."

James' group is concerned about the impact the flights will have on the 50,000-acre conservation acre and the federally protected 15,000-acre McCullough Wilderness inside the conservation area.

James, who said he has hiked Sloan Canyon and the McCullough Mountains for two decades, said flights should be detoured 5 or 6 miles south of the planned helicopter routes or moved to the east side of the Las Vegas Valley.

James' counter- proposals would face their own set of problems. The National Park Service is trying to restrict flights over Lake Mead, and helicopter companies have said a significant detour to the south would make the new site unworkable.

Susan Potts, of the Friends of Nevada Wilderness, agreed with James, noting that Reid and Ensign sponsored the legislation that created the conservation area two years ago.

"Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area was established to protect one of the last wild places remaining adjacent to Las Vegas," Potts said. "This will ruin the opportunities for peaceful recreation enjoyed by so many local residents."

County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury said he appreciates the concerns of the conservationists, but the plan offered in the Reid legislation is the best compromise available.

"The bill that Sen. Reid is introducing represents the best solution to all the alternatives presented," he said Wednesday. "The groups that are opposing this are about to shoot themselves in the foot.

"The impacts will be much more detrimental if we have to go to the fall-back position, because that is two miles north of this site," Woodbury said. "That would take flights over the petroglyphs and the wilderness area.

"Two miles south, you're only hitting the outskirts of the preserve," he said.

Tessa Hafen, Reid's spoke swoman, said the legislation includes several provisions that should make it more palatable to conservationists. The bill would require helicopter flights to avoid sensitive areas such as the American Indian petroglyph sites or bighorn sheep habitat. Each flight would also have a $3-per-passenger fee to go to a fund designed to protect cultural and wildlife resources in Nevada.

"Legislation is the art of compromise," Hafen said. "It's impossible to make everyone happy, but you try to do the best you can. There were a lot of people involved in this bill."

Woodbury and Reid hope the bill passes this year, which would keep the project on track to open a heliport by 2008.