Locals Oppose ‘Insane’ Plan to Sell 500,000 Acres of Public Lands for Housing in Nevada and Utah

Nevada’s congressional delegation, environmental groups, tribes and local officials see the late-night amendment to House Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill as a threat to the state's water resources, tribal sovereignty and public engagement.

For years, Nevada’s congressional delegation and leading Las Vegas officials have been pushing Congress to pass the Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act, which would allow tens of thousands of acres of public lands currently managed by the federal government to be sold at auction to cities and developers looking for space to expand. 

So Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee might have expected some applause when the committee passed a late-night amendment to last week’s budget reconciliation bill that would do just that. 

But the amendment, intended to help the federal government afford the Trump administration’s tax cuts, had none of the existing bill’s stipulations to benefit Nevadans and conserve other areas. Instead of accolades, it has drawn the ire of nearly every group backing the Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act. They have called the amendment a “land giveaway” to developers. 

Reps. Mark Amodei (R-NV) and Celeste Maloy (R-UT) added amendments to the budget reconciliation bill just before midnight last Tuesday that would sell more than half a million acres of public land in Nevada and Utah for housing development in the two states. Opponents say the amendments would fuel unsustainable growth across Nevada and southern Utah that would not provide affordable housing, but would threaten tribal sovereignty by disposing of public lands bordering the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation, take more water out of the already declining Colorado River and set a path for the federal government to begin the sell-off of public lands across the country.

The amendment for Nevada would pave the way for the development of thousands of acres up to the boundaries of national monuments Avi Kwa Ame and Gold Butte, in addition to the Pyramid Lake Reservation.

“Our two states are the test case,” said Mathilda Miller, the government relations director for Native Voters Alliance Nevada. “If this land grab goes through quietly, they’ll use the same exact playbook somewhere else. The amendment was dropped at midnight. It was dropped in a massive budget bill. And it was rushed through without meaningful public input. If they can do that near Avi Kwa Ame, Gold Butte and the boundaries of Pyramid Lake, then they can and they will do it to somebody else’s homelands.”

Amodei and Maloy, the amendment sponsors, did not respond to requests for comment. 

Amodei told the Nevada Independent that he felt adding the amendment to the budget reconciliation bill was the only way to achieve the goals of the various Nevada lands bills, and that the House committee was excited about making money off sales of public lands. 

“Not all federal lands have the same value,” Maloy said during the committee meeting before the bill advanced. “Some should not be available for disposal. We all agree on that. However, in both Democratic and Republican administrations, for decades, we’ve been disposing of appropriate lands in a manner that’s consistent with what I propose to do here.”

It’s the latest in attempts by some Republicans to transfer control of public lands managed by the federal government to states, a highly divisive political stance in the West, where most of those lands are located. Attempts to privatize public lands or give them to states date back decades, with the movements gaining momentum in the 1970s and 80s during the so-called “sagebrush rebellion.” The Trump administration and some Republicans in Congress have touted public-lands sales as a solution to the country’s housing shortage, but experts have disputed that claim. Even some Republican members of Congress have pushed back on recent attempts to sell off federal lands.

“We are not dealing with the same type of sagebrush rebel that we were dealing with in the 1970s,” said Kyle Roerink, the executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, a grassroots group that works in Nevada and Utah on freshwater issues and has opposed previous land bills. “The sagebrush rebels of today don’t drive cattle. They drive Porsches and Mercedes.”

“This continuous growth that we see year after year, day after day, decade after decade, does nothing to help preserve our souls, preserve our feelings and preserve the culture,” said Steven Wadsworth, chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, during a press conference last week.

The proposed sell-off in Utah has drawn less scrutiny than the disposal of public lands in Nevada has, though environmental groups also oppose sales there. The bill would allow public lands to be sold for development in southern Utah, primarily for the fast-growing city of St. George. 

But that land follows the pathway of the planned Lake Powell pipeline, a decades-long and highly controversial attempt by Utah to pipe water from the dwindling Colorado River’s second-largest reservoir, which is roughly 33 percent full, to fuel growth in the state. Attempts to build the pipeline in the past have drawn intense scrutiny from both environmentalists and other states that depend on Colorado River water. 

“It’s just another signifier that nobody actually wants to respect the signs that Mother Nature is sending to us, and that’s that our snowfalls are changing, our precipitation patterns are changing, our runoffs are changing,” Roerink said. “But we have people who want to continue doing business like it’s 1999 and everything’s peachy, and the reservoirs are full.”

The bill will be considered by the full House of Representatives in the coming weeks.

Public lands are managed by the federal government for the benefit of all Americans, allowing for the creation of national parks and wilderness areas, and for extraction of resources by logging, mining and energy companies. But in some cases, they can be disposed of—meaning sold—typically to developers for housing or extraction projects.

Growth in Las Vegas, for example, has long relied on bills that dispose of public lands to expand, as the federal government owns roughly 85 percent of the land within the state’s borders, far more than in any other state. But those bills had conservation requirements, and the funds generated by the land sales were earmarked for conservation and local schools. The latest Clark County lands bill—the Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act—would also give land back to the Moapa Band of Paiutes and provide further protection for other public lands in Nevada.

Money from the sale of public lands authorized by the new amendment would go to the U.S. Treasury, rather than to local communities. 

While Amodei’s amendment to sell off public lands in Nevada pulls from existing land bill proposals, it leaves out the conservation components. In a statement, U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), who proposed the Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act, called Amodei’s amendment “an insane plan that cuts funding from water conservation and public schools across Nevada.”

“This is a land grab to fund Republicans’ billionaire giveaway tax bill, and I’ll fight it with everything I have,” she said. 

Even Clark County, home to Las Vegas, which would be a major beneficiary of the amendment, opposes it. Jennifer Cooper, a spokeswoman for the county, said in a statement that county officials “are concerned that this bill does not reflect the [Clark County Commission’s] priorities to facilitate responsible future development, especially as it relates to environmental conservation, water and public infrastructure.”

The Nevada Wildlife Federation has supported Nevada lands bills in the past, but opposes Amodei’s amendment. “You get all the land sales and nothing to secure that wildlife conservation in the future,” said Russell Kuhlman, executive director of the nonprofit organization. “So now we essentially lost our bargaining chip, right? Why would developers who now have what they want out of the deal come back to the table to discuss conservation?”

Not every environmental group in Nevada has supported land bills in the past. OIivia Tanager, the director of the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe Chapter, said the Clark County bill has divided Nevada’s environmental groups, with her group, the Great Basin Water Network and the Center for Biological Diversity opposing it. 

There are no guarantees in either the lands bills or Amodei’s amendment that housing developed on disposed public lands will actually be affordable. On top of that, building on public lands, often in remote areas away from major urban centers, like the lands proposed near Las Vegas, would expand sprawl, forcing more people to commute long distances to and from work, Tanager said. That means more air pollution in communities of color or low-income areas along congested highways, on top of disruptions to wildlife, increasing water demand in an arid region and the buildout of more energy infrastructure to power homes—likely in the form of natural gas plants that increase ratepayers’ bills, she said. 

“I hope this is the dawn of a new day,” Tanager said of the opposition to Amodei’s amendment, “where we all come together and refuse to sell off our public lands for corporate greed and at the expense of communities across the entire state of Nevada, but also across the country.”

Cover photo:  A budget amendment in Nevada would pave the way for the development of public land near the Gold Butte National Monument. Credit: Bureau of Land Management