 When Larry Paulson went
to the Las Vegas District Office of the Bureau of Land
Management the first week in December, 1996, and asked to
see the case file on Phase 1 of the Del Webb land-swap,
he was told the appraisals on the land exchange were
"confidential." |
|
| So, on December 8, the former
research professor and director of UNLV's Lake Mead
Limnological Research Center, wrote Nevada's senior U.S.
Senator, Harry Reid. "Can they do that?" asked Paulson,
who had visited the BLM office in his role as water
consultant for the Nevada Seniors Coalition. "It doesn't seem right that we can't find
out what the property is worth," he wrote. "Is
that the way the so called "Olympic" land swap
that involves 3,800 acres and the "American Land
Conservancy" deal for another 6,002 acres in the
southwestern portion of the valley will be handled
too?" It is four weeks later now, and if Dr. Paulson
has not yet heard from Senator Reid, it may be because
Reid doesn't know quite what to say. That's because, Electric Nevada has
learned, Nevada's senior senator is himself a major
source of in-state BLM officials' anxiety that nothing at
all should interfere with the Del Webb land swap. Reid is now, because of his ranking status on
the U.S. Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee,
the single most powerful Democrat in the Senate |
when it comes to either
natural resource issues or power over the U.S. Department
of Interior -- of which the BLM is a part. |
