FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED AUG. 27, 1999
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Shall EPA enforce its fantasies of Cloud-Cuckooland?
Geography mandated that Las Vegas would expand to the southeast and northwest, and that's precisely what it's done -- recently settling hundreds of thousands of new residents in the northwest, from whence they dutifully commute back along congested U.S. 95 every weekday.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that thousands of automobiles trying to snake their way through downtown's Spaghetti Bowl interchange at a walking pace each morning and night can't help the valley's air quality. Nevada's state Department of Transportation sensibly figures a big part of the answer will be to widen U.S. 95 from 6 to 10 lanes from downtown to the Rainbow curve, and from for to six lanes as far north as Craig Road.
But wait. Before this sensible plan could move forward, federal law (the $325 million project will be 60 percent federally financed) required the state Department of Transportation to consult with the Region 9 office of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, in Haight Ashbury, California.
Sauntering into their San Francisco office in their Birkenstocks, these ponytailed potentates have now seen fit to object, in a July letter to the state, that more Las Vegas highway lanes will only fill up with more cars, creating more pollution.
Better solutions, the EPA deep thinkers muse, might be stricter zoning regulations which would force folks to bunk in high-rises closer to downtown, and heavy-handed state mandates requiring taxpayers to car pool, ride more buses, or fund billion-dollar trolley lines -- whether anyone would actually ride the contraptions or not.
Well, yes. That might work -- in some child's board game, where we get to sweep the earth clean and strt again from scratch.
Residential neighborhoods in San Francisco are much more densely packed, since otherwise people would be sleeping on their surfboards. And since they've outlawed almost everything else there, they might as well go ahead and ban cars -- though somehow I doubt even their famously picturesque trolley cars could really take up the slack.
San Francisco is a very nice city, as are Amsterdam and Bangkok. While we're at it, perhaps we should pass laws requiring Nevadans to commut to work in canal barges, or rickshaws.
Central planners hate the personal freedom represented by Americans' love affair with their automobiles, as well as the unrestrained capitalism which bring desired services and products into our backyards, which they scorn as "suburban sprawl."
But pardon me: wasn't it the central planners who first embraced "urban renewal," passing the zoning laws that eliminated inexpensive residential hotels ("flophouses") and storefront groceries where mom and pop were allowed to live upstairs -- thus helping destroy America's old, pre-war, "mixed use" urban economy, and speeding the flight to the suburbs?
Technically, the EPA has no veto power over the road widening. But Laura Fujii with the EPA in San Francisco says her agency's opinion will carry great weight when the Federal Highway Administration hands down its final decision. And Kent Cooper, manager of the project for the state, agrees that the EPA could "reject the whole thing," though he doubts it will come to that.
Yes, governent highways funded with taxes looted at gunpoint -- complete with the "eminent domain" seizure of houses and small businesses found to be in the way -- are inherently pernicious. We're going to have to restore the free market, allowing private firms to go back to building private toll roads, eventually.
But in the meantime, the EPA would far exceed its authority here, if these highway-haters really aim to hold this urgently-needed project for ransom while they extort an absurd commitment of more Nevada tax dollars for bike paths and trolley lines, as though Las Vegas drivers deserve to be punished for not seeking the advice of Uncle Sam before "allowing" northwestern property owners to develop their residential properties as they saw fit.
Local land use decisions are just that -- local. Las Vegas may be far from perfect, but we mostly like it the way it is. If we're going to allow the folks in San Francisco to force their current lifestyle on us, let's go open an assault-weapons store, a machine gun practice range, a NASCAR race track, and a couple of all-night roulette joints on Nob Hill, and see how they like it.
(I'm betting our lounge acts, alone, would have them screaming for mercy. Have you ever spent an evening with a couple of Captain and Tenille (start ital)impersonators(end ital)?)
If the EPA has some minor suggestions to benefit air quality, fine. But if the agency insists on grossly exceeding its authority here, then Nevada's congressional delegation should step in and start taking names.
Vin Suprynowicz, assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is the author of "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," available at 1-800-244-2224, or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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