Monday, March 24, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Organizers have applied to the federal Bureau of Land Management to move the Labor Day weekend gathering from the Black Rock Desert to an equally remote site just to the west in Hualapai Flat.
If approved, the bulk of the offbeat recreational and artistic festival would be held in Washoe County instead of Pershing County. But the new site would involve public and private land in both counties.
The new site is located along State Route 34 about 35 miles north of Gerlach. The general area is about 100 miles north of Reno.
Lynn Clemons of the BLM's Winnemucca office said organizer Lee Harvey responded to a laundry list of complaints about last year's event in his application to the agency.
Harvey "addressed all of our concerns," Clemons told the Lovelock Review-Miner. "If he hadn't, he wouldn't have gotten a permit."
Pershing County commissioners voted to seek an end to the event on the Black Rock Desert after a rash of problems at last year's gathering, which drew more than 7,000 people, most from California.
Three people were injured, one critically, when a drunken driver slammed into some tents. Another man was killed when his motorcycle ran head-on into a van.
But Harvey said he intends to go to great lengths to put a new and more respectable face on the event.
He said he would hire a professional security force as well as trained medical personnel for the event. Camping would be restricted to private land and vehicles would be prohibited on public land, he said.
Organizers are seeking permission to erect various art figures on the Hualapai Flats playa and then burn them down. The event takes it name from the ceremonial burning of a 40-foot-high wooden sculpture of a man.
Public comments voiced during a recent hearing in Lovelock will be used to develop a preliminary environmental assessment on the new site, said BLM recreational specialist Mike Bilbo.
The assessment should be completed by late April, he said.
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