FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED SEPT. 27, 1999
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Dust in the wind
It's no secret the federal government is trying to block public access
to most of the desert West.
It wasn't enough to create huge new national preserves which the
cash-strapped Parks Service says are too large to manage (whereupon the
eco-extremists shout "Not large enough! We must ban mining and aircraft
overflights even (start ital)outside(end ital) these borders! No ground
squirrel may ever be allowed to hear an 'unnatural noise!' ")
No, recent decades have also witnessed the once-healthy Clark County
cattle industry dying the death of a thousand cuts as section after section
of our desert land was ruled off limits, frivolously labeled "riparian
study area" or "archaeological study area" or "ortoise habitat" (despite
the fact desert tortoises survive droughts better on land grazed by
cattle.)
Federal officials sink posts or dig enormous tank traps to block access
to roads where in decades past Boy Scouts could camp, folks could drive
off-road vehicles, or citizens could engage in such now-demonized
activities as hunting, rock collecting and target shooting.
In the national forests, the Forest Service has even announced a program
to eliminate "ghost roads" -- obliterating old trails, the beter to
declare vast parcels off limits.
But never depend on federal regulators to be straightforward about such
goals, or to attack only from the front.
Instead, this time we must look to the threat of extortion (the
bureaucrats prefer the term "sanctions") by the Environmental Protection
Agency, should Clark County fail to meet ever-stricter air quality
standards by the year 2006.
What on earth can a Washington agency designed to limit automobile and
industrial pollution have to do with land use in the empty desert?
Simple. No federal agency ever says, "Our job is done, let's pat
ourselves on the bank and go home" ... as the EPA should have done years
ago.
Instead -- since new work must be found, if the payroll is to keep
growing -- "pollution restrictions" are continually made more stringent,
until a "particulate standard" is set which outlaws even the normal amount
of dust blown into the air by our desert winds.
Whereupon the EPA counts on some local quisling like County Commissioner
Erin Kenny to come forward and do their bidding, backing a new Fence Law
which County Health District officials estimate could cost local landowners
"only" $1,000 an acre, or $22 to $40 million.
(That's the government estimate. Recall that Medicare now costs 20 times
its projected 1999 cost -- as estimated in 1965 -- (start ital)after(end
ital) correcting for inflation.)
Oh, they're not calling it a "Fence Law," of course. Ms. Kenny says she's
only requesting "studies" into how dust generation from "disturbed" desert
land could be reduced.
But what do they mean by "disturbed" land? Why, desert land which
citizens are allowed to use for off-road activities, of course.
And what kind of steps might private landowners be forced to take should
these "studies" lead to new county regulations, as intended?
Why, landowners might be required to spray their vacant land with
chemicals designed to re-create the wild desert's hard surface crust,
explains Michael Naylor, director of the health district's Air Pollution
Control Division.
Oh, and the plan would also probably mean both public and private
property owners would have to, you know ... fence their land to keep foot
and off-road vehicle traffic from kicking up dust.
Even environmental advocates are balking at the chemical-spraying plan.
"We don't want to make an air quality problem into a water quality
problem," notes Jessica Hodge, urban issues coordinator for Citizen Alert.
While representatives of the homebuilding and construction industries
wonder whether Nevadans really want to see home prices rise enough to cover
an extra $40 million in costs -- with no guarantee even that will satisfy
the EPA.
On the other side of the question, County Commissioner Mary Kincaid best
put the problem into perspective on Sept. 23, pointing out that local
citizens are now far more concerned about traffic, crime, and lack of open
space, than about air quality.
Yet the commissioners would still consider embracing regulations that
could end up fencing off land from public access, from Bunkerville to Sandy
Valley, and from Searchlight to Indian Springs?
That's overkill. It's too much expense for too little proven gain. It's
an unfunded mandate -- unless Ms. Kenny means for the county to buy and
hand out all that fence wire, of course. But most of all, it embraces a
hidden federal agenda that our county commissioners should be resisting,
not aiding and abetting.
Vin Suprynowicz, assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal, is author of the ne book, "Send in the Waco Killers:
Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," available at $21.95 plus $3
shipping through Mountain Media, P.O. Box 271122, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127; or
at 1-800-244-2224; or via web site
http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
***
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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