Friday, May 2, 2003 | 11:16 a.m.
Officials from Clark and Lincoln counties are quietly considering moving their county line to put a controversial planned development in Lincoln County.
The change would affect the development, called Coyote Springs, which would straddle the county line about 50 miles north of Las Vegas. Lobbyist Harvey Whittemore's family controls the property and plans to put 50,000 homes on about 42,000 acres on both sides of the county line.
Doug Carriger, Lincoln County manager, said the discussions are in a very early stage.
"The attitude of the Lincoln County commissioners is that any talk of moving the county line in the current legislature would be way premature," Carriger said. "To this point there have just been conversations."
If the county pushes for a bill, it would likely be during the 2005 or 2007 legislative sessions, Carriger said. Under Nevada law, the Legislature has sole discretion to set county lines.
Both county governments would be extensively consulted before that happened, Carriger said.
Assistant Clark County Manager Rick Holmes said moving the county line is only one option that the two governments have discussed in relation to the anticipated development at Coyote Springs.
"We have had several discussions," Holmes said. One option for unifying the divided development would be to incorporate the area as a city. Holmes said it appears that nothing in the Nevada statutes prohibits incorporating a city across a county line.
Thom Reilly, Clark County manager, said he has not heard a word about moving the county line, and could not comment in detail until he has learned more.
"Obviously, changing county boundaries isn't something done lightly," Reilly said.
Whittemore said it is premature to discuss the issue in detail.
"This is something that is going to be way down the road, if ever," he said.
Whittemore said his company's relationships with both Clark and Lincoln county governments are very good. The discussion over moving the county line would be between those two governments, but "We'll participate if people ask us," he said.
About 28,000 acres of Coyote Springs is in Lincoln County, and 13,000 are in Clark County. Clark County has given local approval for construction of 2,000 homes, which Whittemore said he hopes to build in the next year or two.
He said some federal environmental approvals are still pending.
Carriger said the advantage for the developer would be that all of the infrastructure and local rules would be handled by one government entity.
"You want to have a development that is seamless in services," he said. Bringing the entire project under one roof also would provide economies of scale in bringing roads, sewers and other infrastructure to the project, he added.
One opponent to such a move would be the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which has purchased water rights in Coyote Springs.
"We would fight that puppy tooth and nail," authority General Manager Pat Mulroy said. "Why would we want wells we purchased to be in another county?"
The water authority provides wholesale water to municipal systems in the urban areas of Clark County.
"We're building a pipeline right now," Mulroy said. "There is absolutely no appetite to see that go into Lincoln County."
Ron James, Nevada State historic preservation officer, said such border changes have strong precedents in the state's volatile political history.
"Lincoln County originally was Clark County," he said, referring to the 1909 legislation that carved out the new home of Las Vegas. "It's not as though that border or any political border is sacred, necessarily.
"The real question would be whether the people on both sides would find that desirable," James said.
But James added that although changes in county lines -- and even disputes over which county could claim a town as the county seat -- were common in the first 60 years of the state's history, the creation of Pershing County from Humboldt County in the northern part of the state in 1919 was the last wholesale change.
Moving the county line to put Coyote Springs completely in Lincoln County would probably be the biggest change since then, James said.
The Legislature, however, in 2001 adjusted the Nye-Clark county line by just a few square miles -- and for a similar reason, Holmes said. Some homes near Pahrump were in Clark County and had to turn to Las Vegas for services. The boundary adjustment corrected the problem for those residents.
Coyote Springs would be bigger -- about 66 square miles.
Hal Rothman, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, history professor, said such changes in boundaries are motivated by economic and political forces. Those elements exist in the conversation about Coyote Springs, he said.
The development "would be a tremendous revenue generator for a very poor county," Rothman said.
He said a development such as Coyote Springs or the 13,500 acres slated by federal legislation for development under the Lincoln County Land Act in 2000 would fundamentally alter the character of Lincoln County.
With under 5,000 residents counted during the 2000 federal census, any large development would become the population and political center of Lincoln County, he said.
Both the Coyote Springs and Lincoln County Land Act areas are adjacent to Clark County. But Pioche, the Lincoln County seat, is 80 miles north of the Clark-Lincoln line.
"If there are 5,000 people there right now, the first town with 10,000 people is the dominant force in the county," Rothman said.
Lincoln County already has a bill affecting Coyote Springs in this session of the Legislature. Assembly Bill 136 would create a special tax district for the development that would fund habitat preservation for desert tortoises and other rare plants and animals.
The bill passed the Assembly last week 26-16 despite the objections of environmentalists and is now in the Senate.
Whittemore said his company, Coyote Springs Investments, neither supported nor opposed the bill. He said counties have a right to fund habitat conservation and protect endangered species, but the bill would not allow the developers to evade any federal or local environmental responsibilities.
Carriger said the bill would more fairly tax the future residents of the development for the habitat protection rather than residents in other parts of the county, which is bigger in land area than Massachusetts.
"We want to make sure that someone who lives 150 miles away isn't paying additional property taxes for Coyote Springs," he said.
Environmentalists have generally opposed the entire project, and fear that the tax district would hasten development. The Phoenix-based Center for Biological Diversity and Reno-based Nevada Outdoor Recreation Association have sued to block the development, arguing that the decade-old transfer of Bureau of Land Management property that created the site is not legal.
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