BLM says county won’t get free heliport land

Suzanne Struglinski

Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2004 | 11:21 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Clark County should not receive federal land for a new heliport for free, a Bureau of Land Management official told lawmakers today.

A pending bill would release 229 acres of federal land to Clark County, giving the county another option for the new heliport.

The government supports the idea of relieving residents of helicopter tour noise, but Elena Daly, BLM's director of National Landscape Conservation System, said it would not be in the government's best interest just to give almost $57 million worth of land to the county when it would not be used by the general public.

Clark County Aviation Director Randy Walker stressed the importance of the site to Southern Nevada and affected residents, but Daly said at a House Resources subcommittee meeting today that the bill should require a fair market value payment for the 229 acres. The bureau also could lease the land to the county under an existing federal law, so the pending bill would not need to be passed.

But Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., a member of the subcommittee, said he did not want to see "squabbling" over the cost of the land by the Interior Department, since the federal government owns 87 percent of the land in the state anyway.

Gibbons said land values in Clark County are "absolutely astronomical" and the project becomes instantly more expensive if the bill would be changed.

Gibbons pressed Daly on whether the department had ever released land for below market values rates. Daly said it has on a case-by-case basis.

The bill also includes a $3-per-passenger fee from every flight to go to a fund designed to protect cultural and wildlife resources.

Daly said that fee price should be adjusted for inflation and go into the account created by the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act, not a new, separate account.

The County Aviation Department originally evaluated 13 sites and settled on a 45-acre site it purchased on Interstate 15 at Sloan as its best option.

But residents from Henderson's Anthem community and other neighborhoods that might be affected complained about the potential noise from the tour helicopters as they brought tourists to the Grand Canyon and local sites.

The federal land proposed in the bill is farther south along Interstate 15 than the initial site that was the top choice, but congressional approval would be required to allow the county to get the land transferred from the Bureau of Land Management.

John Hiatt of Las Vegas, who spoke on behalf of the Nevada Wilderness coalition, said he opposed the site entirely and would rather see land near the closed Sunrise landfill, in the mountains north of Sam Boyd Stadium, used for the heliport.

He said the federal proposal does nothing but move the problem two miles south, while choosing another site would help solve most of the problems.

He said the Sunrise option is closer to the Strip and has the water, power and telephone lines a heliport would need.

The heliport is expected to open by 2008 after going through environmental assessments.