County showcases plans for LV Wash

Come Saturday, Southern Nevada residents will have a place to educate themselves about plans to develop a huge park in the Las Vegas Wash that will help clean local drinking water and act as a wildlife refuge.

The new Wetlands Park Information Center opens at 10 a.m. and offers the public a chance to learn about efforts to restore the natural habitat destroyed by the valley's increasing runoff.

The ribbon of green that once snaked across the eastern valley has shrunk to less than 200 acres as more runoff from the valley's surface, ground waters and floods pour into the wash, which acts as the end of a giant funnel.

The wash's marshes begin at the foothills of Frenchman's Mountain east of the city, extend south approaching the Silver Bowl, then curve east toward Lake Mead.

The Las Vegas Valley once nurtured more than 2,000 acres of cattail marshes. Heron nested in willow trees and beavers lived along their banks. But increasing discharges of waste water, valley runoff and floods have chewed away at the plants and subsequently the wildlife.

The wetlands are an essential step to improve Southern Nevada's water quality because cattail marshes and other wetlands plants filter organisms and chemicals naturally, in keeping with Clark County's goal for restoring the wetlands.

County Commissioner Lorraine Hunt, whose district contains the wetlands, has big plans for educating people and letting them enjoy desert marshes.

"The park will be four times the size of Central Park in Manhattan," Hunt said, noting that the wetlands will range between 2,200 and 2,400 acres.

"I've envisioned this for so long," she continued. "Ultimately, it will become a major environmental tourist attraction within 10 miles of the Las Vegas Strip. People come to the United States to go to the Grand Canyon, but this is so special."

In 15 years the park could host meandering trails leading hikers to a view of the natural processes in the wash, roads leading to blinds for birdwatchers and a permanent center for research and education, Hunt said.

"It could be just magnificent, alive with birds and plants that need our protection," she said. "We need them for our children to see and feel and experience it."

In addition to water and waste-water agencies, the Friends of the Wetlands, Ducks Unlimited, the Regional Flood Control District and anyone else interested in protecting a living resource have been invited to help, Hunt said.

The temporary center's videos, maps and information about the Las Vegas Wash are available to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. seven days a week thanks to more than 21 volunteers staffing the center, said Joan Lolmaugh of the Clark County Department of Parks and Recreation.

The 10 videos, each running three to five minutes in a kiosk, focus on topics such as birds, water quality, erosion and the creatures that live less than 15 miles from one of the most urbanized areas in the Mojave Desert.

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