BLM disputes value of land for proposed airport site

A Bureau of Land Management official testified Tuesday that the federal agency cannot support a proposed public land sale for an international cargo airport south of Las Vegas.

Peter Culp, BLM assistant director, disputed the cost of the federal lands Clark County aviation officials are seeking for the airport. The entire Nevada congressional delegation supports the sale of the land 30 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

Randall Walker, director of the county's Department of Aviation, said he was willing to forgo the opportunity to obtain the land for free to avoid the time-consuming BLM exchange process.

Instead, the county wants to buy it at fair market value to be determined over the next six months. That value would be frozen for the next 20 years, the time it would take to build the airport and an industrial park around it. Without the airport, Walker said, the cost of the land would remain the same. "We're just local government trying to be good planners," he said. "Twenty years down the road, there will be too many conflicts (to obtain the land)."

However, Culp told the House Committee on Resources that the land's value would increase with or without the airport and that the price shouldn't be frozen. Further, an airport would restrict an array of existing uses on the public lands, the BLM official said.

Mining claims, grazing rights, utility corridors, three major power transmission lines, threatened Mojave Desert tortoise habitat and off-road vehicle routes exist on the 6,500 acres proposed for the airport.

Culp noted that Clark County actually would be buying the public land at less than fair market value. The bill, HR 3705, requires the county's Department of Aviation to pay for the lands piecemeal over 20 years at a price set within six months of the legislation's passage. "The bill should be modified to base the values of public lands on fair market value at the time of conveyance," he said.

"Why would it increase in value? I know that area," Rep. John Ensign, R-Nev. said. "It's the most worthless land."

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., who sponsored the bill, accused the BLM of trying to reap the benefits of an airport to be built near Las Vegas.

"You want to be the beneficiary of the hard-working airport," Gibbons said. "You want to have your cake and eat it, too."

The land has not been appraised in 20 years, and the BLM does not have an accurate map of the area between Jean and Primm, Culp said. That makes it difficult to follow legal boundaries, since the proposed area seems to follow natural landmarks such as mountains, he said.

If a buffer zone for gigantic aircraft is included in the airport lands, the total parcel is 20,000 acres of public land.

Clark County already has received federal grants to build a general-use airport that opened at Jean two years ago, Culp said. "The Federal Aviation Administration informally advises that operations by large aircraft at an Ivanpah Valley airport site, as envisioned by Clark County, could likely conflict with the general aviation activity at Jean," he said.

The Sierra Club protested the cargo airfield at a news conference in Las Vegas as the congressional committee met Tuesday. Randy Harness of the Sierra Club said that a cargo airport would pump more air pollution, noise and traffic into the already crowded Las Vegas Valley.

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