Senate Panel OKs Bill on Desert Airport to Serve Las Vegas

A Senate committee approved a bill Thursday that would allow construction of an airport in the Mojave Desert outside Las Vegas, despite objections from environmentalists concerned about urban sprawl and noise pollution.

The legislation, which has the backing of all three Nevada Democrats in Congress, passed the House unanimously in March and is expected to proceed swiftly through the Senate now that it has been endorsed by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Airport officials in Clark County--which includes the city of Las Vegas and McCarran International Airport, as well as five smaller aviation facilities--say that rapid population growth will put McCarran at operating capacity by 2010.

The county is trying to prepare, said Debbie Millett of the Clark County Aviation Department. The proposed location of the new airport is a dry lake bed in the Ivanpah Valley, six miles from the California state line near Interstate 15. The site is near railroad cargo tracks that one day may be used for high-speed trains between Las Vegas and Southern California. The facility would not open for at least a decade.

“We did a very diligent search for a site where we could put a new airport within a radius of 35 miles of the city and this was the only place,” said Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who toured the 6,500-acre site last week with Federal Aviation Administration head Jane Garvey.

Environmental groups said they do not expect the administration to block the project, which has bipartisan support.

Nevada legislators introduced a bill to authorize the sale of the Ivanpah Valley land from Nevada’s Bureau of Land Management, which owns it, to Clark County in the last Congress. Conservation and budgetary concerns blocked the bill’s passage in 1998 and 1999.

The Interior Department, parent agency of the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, initially fought the proposal, saying the project would have a negative impact on the Mojave National Preserve. But Jessica Hodge of the Sierra Club’s Las Vegas field office predicted that political considerations would override environmental concerns.

“It is an election year,” she said. “[Clinton] is not going to veto it, which is very disappointing.”

Administration officials could not be reached for comment.

Alan M. Feldman, a spokesman for MGM-Mirage, which he said is the largest taxpayer in the state, suggested that some local businesses would be willing to pick up the tab for the land. “One of the things that has made Las Vegas so successful is that airport authorities here have stayed ahead of the curve,” Feldman said. The city is the fastest-growing in the nation.

But not all local officials are thrilled about the new airport.

“We’d prefer to see them build in another area,” said Bob Stewart, a spokesman for the state Bureau of Land Management. “It would get us out of some conflicts with the National Park Service.”

On Wednesday, a coalition of environmental groups including the Sierra Club and the Red Rock Audubon Society sent a last-minute letter of protest to all four members of the Nevada congressional delegation and to President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

The proposal approved by the committee would require a comprehensive environmental review by the Department of the Interior. An amendment sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) would provide that, if airport plans fail to meet standards set forth in the National Environmental Policy Act, the land would revert to the Bureau of Land Management.

The Sierra Club’s Hodge and Marcia Argust of the National Parks and Conservation Assn., a private advocacy group for public lands, said that environmentalists remain opposed to the legislation because it would provoke additional development around already endangered areas of the Mojave.

Hilarie Grey of the Clark County Aviation Department said the new airport, if built, would be used first for cargo transport and eventually would provide passenger service, including international flights.