By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
The City of Mesquite has been left out of the most significant public land planning process in a decade. At least that was the general feeling of members of the Mesquite City Council at a public meeting held at Mesquite City Hall on Tuesday, March 3.
The central item on the meeting agenda was the Resource Management Plan (RMP) currently being proposed by the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Officials from the BLM Las Vegas Field Office were in attendance at the meeting to answer questions and listen to public comment.
The 2,200 page RMP document will provide management direction for the 3.1 million acres of public land in southern Nevada, including nearly all of the open land surrounding Mesquite and the other northeastern Clark County rural communities.
The draft document was released for public comment last October. During the Fall, the BLM hosted a number of public workshops in the Las Vegas Valley. But no one from the BLM staff had visited any of the northeastern Clark County communities to present the plan and accept public comment; at least not until Tuesday’s meeting.
With the public comment set to end on Monday, March 9, City Council members in last week’s meeting asked why nothing had yet been presented to them by the BLM.
“We are an elected body, a local government entity for the people of Mesquite,” said Councilwoman Cindi Delaney. “The extent of this plan is extremely important to our people and it will have an impact on them directly; more so than the people of Las Vegas. I would think that it would have been important for the BLM to have sought input from the public out here.”
BLM Las Vegas Field Office Manager Gayle Marrs-Smith explained that the BLM had posted notice of the release of the draft RMP back in October as is required by law, and public comment had been held open for 150 days. That included granting requests for two different extensions.
In addition, he BLM had held five public meetings in Las Vegas and Henderson, she said. County Commissioner Tom Collins had set up additional stakeholder meetings where public input was accepted, also held in Las Vegas. Collins had then arranged for officials from Overton Power District and Moapa Valley Water District to meet with BLM officials regarding concerns with various details in the plan, she said.
Furthermore, Marrs-Smith said that BLM staff had tried to schedule an appearance at the Moapa Valley Town Advisory Board but were unable to attend on the agendized date. They had since been unable to reschedule the appearance, she said.
Still, when asked, Marrs-Smith noted that no meetings had, up to then, been held in Mesquite.
Mesquite mayor Al Litman expressed concern about the complexity of the document and the ability of the City and its residents to make substantive comments in such a short period of time.
“This document is terribly complicated,” Litman said. “With four alternatives in each topic and more than nine possible topics, there are over 6,000 possible mathematical combinations that must be considered here. If we still had the full 150 days, I doubt that we could analyze all of this and come up with all of the meaningful comments that are needed here.”
Every member of the City Council made a plea that the deadline for public comment be extended by the BLM so that the City could take the time needed to make in-depth comments.
Marrs-Smith explained that this was not a matter for her to decide. But she said that she would communicate the request to BLM State and Regional managers and let the City know of the decision in the matter.
During the public comment period Bunkerville resident Duane Magoon emphasized the oversight in the BLM not having brought the plan to the City Council. He pointed out that the BLM had identified 21 different cooperating agencies with whom they had counseled in forming the document. But these did not include the elected boards of the Mesquite City Council, Overton Power or Virgin Valley Water District, he said.
“They would not come to Bunkerville and make a presentation,” Magoon said. “So I am coming here to make my comments. It took them over six years to draft it and we are supposed to review it and comment within a few months. We asked for additional time; I’d like at least five years. Commissioner Collins asked for one year. All we got was a 60 day extension.”
Mesquite resident Barbara Ellestad, who sits on the Virgin Valley Water District (VVWD) Board, emphasized that she was commenting only as a private citizen. She expressed concern about the substantial water rights that VVWD holds in the Virgin Mountain range and whether the RMP would make it more difficult for the district to access those rights in the future.
“My concern is that Virgin Valley Water has not had the opportunity to sit down and discuss issues with you,” Ellestad said to Marrs-Smith. “I’d like to see in writing that this RMP will assure us access to water rights and to build infrastructure to bring water to the community.”
The majority of public comments centered around access to the vast Gold Butte region. Most registered strong opposition to adding restrictions or closing down areas that had long been open for recreation. Many spoke against an ongoing proposal to designate the entire Gold Butte complex as a National Conservation Area with Wilderness.
Some expressed a strong dislike for the BLM in managing lands that, they felt, belong to the state of Nevada, not the federal government.
“BLM does not have authority of these lands,” said Ryan Bundy, son of Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy. “The people will not allow roads to be closed. We’ve had a peaceful year without you running around out there. So stay gone and don’t come back.”
Mesquite resident Dan Lakeman was one of a handful of residents who stood to defend the BLM and its actions.
“The BLM is doing its job,” Lakeman said to the Council. “They put notice of the plan in the federal register as required. If you didn’t read it, that is not on them- -that is on you.”
In the end, the Council was unified in its request for an extended deadline for comments. But Councilman George Rapson felt that something needed to be in place for the City to provide input in case the extension was not granted.
Mesquite Development Services Director Richard Secrist said that staff had hastily gone through some of the key elements of the RMP document and had identified areas of importance to the City. These included proposed changes to disposal boundaries, new ACEC designations, Solar Energy areas, Visual Resource categories and the specification of lands with Wilderness Characteristics.
Rapson moved that if the deadline extension was not granted by BLM officials, that the Council direct staff to submit comments on behalf of the city in accordance with their recommendations. The motion was approved with a unanimous vote.
As of Monday, there was no word that the deadline for comments had been extended by BLM officials.
