It is unfortunate that the passage of Senator Bryan's Black Rock Desert NCA bill in the Senate is being portrayed as "unanimous." While it is true that it was unanimous of those senators present, to imply that 100 senators approved it is absolutely false. In fact, less than 20 (an estimate by one viewer of C-SPAN, more like 5-10) senators were present for the brief, procedural request for unanimous consent. An actual vote was not even taken! Senator Bryan's bill was lumped in with five other bills. A far cry from bipartisan overwhelming support.
I remind readers of the strong opposition to this bill:
- Gov. Guinn opposes it
- Nevada Association of Counties (representing all Nevada counties) unanimously opposes it (and two neighboring counties oppose it)
- Three Nevada state boards (Resources, Agriculture, Minerals) unanimously oppose it
- A broad coalition of local landowners, business people and recreationists oppose it, PLAN-HDC.
The bill attempts to create wilderness on acreage that the Bureau of Land Management has determined to be unsuitable for wilderness designation. This is clearly wrong.
The bill does not have specific, accurate maps or acreage of the NCA and wilderness boundaries. After the law would be enacted, then the final boundaries would be established. And in establishing the estimated boundaries, no local governments, no local landowners and no local businesses were included in the effort. Several requests were made of Sen. Bryan's office to be included in the mapping effort. None of the requests were responded to.
Although the bill allows many multiple uses (grazing, mining, hunting, events, OHV) to continue, initially, these are not guaranteed forever. History of other NCAs clearly shows that once the primary use is changed from multiple use to conservation, the multiple uses gradually get reduced, restricted or eliminated in the years following the creation of the NCA. Based on a UNR study, this is not what Nevadans want.
LARRY PEDRETT
Minden