The Spring Mountains ECHO

PRESIDENT'S CORNER

By Bobbye Fitzgibbons

A subject near and dear to my heart is adding campgrounds to the Spring Mountain National Recreation Area (SMNRA). Of prime importance is a proposed year-round campground on the old Ron Rudden property in lower Lee Canyon, currently owned by Jim Rhodes, the developer. My husband Pat and I have been working diligently with the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to acquire this approximately 220 acres of property, which would make an excellent year-round campground. We have asked for help from both Senators Richard Bryan and Harry Reid, and both have expressed their support for acquiring this property for this purpose, and have contacted the BLM to proceed with their efforts for acquisition.

As we all know from past experience, the property must be acquired now or it will probably be lost forever; Jim Rhodes will build houses on this property, and sell them to individual owners: That is his thing. However, at the present time, he appears to be in a mood to exchange this property, or to sell it to the BLM/Forest Service, so he can acquire more property down in Las Vegas Valley to develop. An opportunity of this sort must be taken advantage of while the iron is hot.

In addition, with the over four million visitors per year to the SMNRA, we need additional campgrounds both on the northeast and southwest sides of the mountain range; perhaps three more campgrounds on the northeast, or so called "Las Vegas side" and two campground on the Pahrump side. The Pahrump campgrounds would help to relieve the pressure on the Las Vegas side. Those on the Pahrump side and perhaps one or two on the Las Vegas side need not be fully developed campgrounds with modern flush toilets, wash basins and showers, paved roads, improved camp sites, etc. They could be of the more primitive type which would cost far less than the full-blown campgrounds which have a construction value in the area of one-half million dollars. The primitive type would probably produce 35 to 40 camp cites at a hundred to two hundred thousand dollars.

Every weekend in the summer I see, from my perch in Lee Canyon, hundreds of vehicles driving around looking for picnicking and camping sites which do not exist, because they are all taken by Thursday evening or sometime on Friday. At the present time there isn't even a sign or anyone on the Lee and Kyle Canyon Highways to inform the people that all the picnics and campgrounds are filled and there are no spaces available. People drive around for hours looking for spaces that do not exist.

Of course, the idea former-Congressman Jimmy Bilbray had in establishing the SMNRA is that it would be easier to get money to develop these mountains for recreational use, and still preserve the natural environment. Believe it or not, even with the balanced budget campaign and the Republican controlled Congress attempting to cut down on all "unnecessary" spending, money is available. There is a thing called the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which came into being by a little-known deal struck between Congress and the American people more than 30 years ago. This fund promised up to $900 million per year, for parks and conservation areas across the country. The money would be taken primarily from a small portion of the receipts of offshore oil and gas drilling; the depletion of one natural resource would pay for the expansion of another. Unfortunately, for the past two decades, Congress has gone back on its word and has diverted more than $11 billion from this fund and spent it on other things.

We have written to Senators Harry Reid and Richard Bryan and Congressman John Ensign to obtain some of this money and use it for the originally intended purpose, particularly for more U.S. Forest Service staffing, and to acquire privately owned lands in the critical areas of the SMNRA for the purpose of campgrounds. This is so the people of greater Las Vegas and the visitors to Southern Nevada can have a pleasant and enjoyable outdoor camping and picnicking experience. My plea is, "let's all get behind this effort" by writing to our Congressional Delegation to get this money for this purpose. As you know, we all spent a great deal of time and effort attending meetings, filling out forms, and participating in discussion groups in order to form an Organizational Plan for the development and organization of the SMNRA. Now we need the staffing and the funds to put that plan into operation. For four million visitors a year and growing, the funds need to be put into operation, and the sooner the better.