BLM ready for ‘historic’ sale

Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2005 | 9:43 a.m.

The federal Bureau of Land Management is preparing to sell off 13,330 acres in southern Lincoln County Wednesday, opening the door for thousands of new homes in what now is nearly all open desert.

The bureau tried and failed to attract bidders when it first put much of the land up for auction in October 2001. A lawsuit filed by environmental groups derailed a second auction scheduled for August 2004. Nevada's congressional delegation sidestepped the legal block with legislation last year requiring the BLM to sell the land, and Lincoln County and BLM officials agree there will be bidders this time around.

"We're looking forward to it," said Joanne Dixon, an administrative assistant for Lincoln County's Building and Planning Department. "We've had a lot of people inquire about it and the prospects look good that most of the land will sell."

Potential bidders were concerned about still-outstanding issues of how services, especially water and city services, would be provided for the new homes expected for the land. The BLM has estimated the land could become home to 60,000 people. The Nevada state demographer's office estimates that Lincoln County was home to fewer than 4,000 people last year.

Dixon said the issues of services and habitat conservation for endemic endangered species can be worked out.

"Both of them are in the works," she said.

Kevin Finn, a BLM realty specialist who has worked on the auction, said he does not expect any last-minute issues to block the sale.

"I anticipate a very lively and exciting auction," he said. "It's going to be very competitive. There will be a lot of bidders."

Bidders will factor the cost of bringing services to the region, just a few miles north of Mesquite, into their bids, Finn said.

Finn, who plans to retire a few months after the auction, said this is the largest sale he has been involved with during the dozen years he has worked at the BLM.

"This is a historic sale," he said. "I don't recall the government disposing of 20-plus square miles of land in a single day ... I'm just flabbergasted that we're disposing of this much land at one time. "

Finn said the sale would be a good thing for Lincoln County because it will expand the government's tax base.

He said last year's legislation has swept aside the concerns of the environmental groups, which had sued to require additional environmental analysis before the auction could go forward.

"Congress has expressed itself and the president has signed the bill," Finn said. "Getting it to the private sector has been a chore and a process but we're finally getting there. Acquiring thousands of acres in the Mesquite area is a great opportunity, a great opportunity for future development."

Christopher Krupp, staff attorney for the Western Land Exchange Project, one of the groups that had sued to block the sale, said the problems previously identified by the environmentalists remain.

"The court found that the BLM never looked at the impacts of selling off the Lincoln County land, and the agency has refused to do so despite the court's ruling," Krupp said. "So now the BLM's going to sell off 20 square miles of land, which by the agency's own account will have 60,000 people living on it within 20 years. No one's bothered to consider what effect, most importantly to ground water, that that's going to have on the region."

Krupp warned that Lincoln County's voters will eventually be overwhelmed by the new neighbors moving into the southern corner of the county.

"The only ones who are going to benefit from this are Vidler Water," a for-profit water broker which works closely with the Lincoln County government, "and a couple of big shot land development companies," Krupp said.