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President Bush has renewed his predecessor's order protecting secrecy at the Air Force's "operating location" at Groom Lake, commonly known as Area 51. Most of the installation sits along a dry lake bed in Lincoln County, 90 miles north of Las Vegas. AP Photo

Monday, February 26, 2001
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Bush renews predecessor's order protecting secrecy at Area 51

Following the course of his predecessor, President Bush has renewed the order former President Clinton drew up to protect secrecy at the Air Force's "operating location" at Groom Lake, commonly known as Area 51.

In the same words as Clinton, Bush, in a Jan. 31 letter, informed Congress that, "Information concerning activities at the operating location near Groom Lake has been properly determined to be classified, and its disclosure would be harmful to national security."

That means mum's the word for Air Force and government types who must follow the president's directive and not say anything about the 38,400-acre installation, most of which sits along a dry lake bed in Lincoln County, some 90 miles north of Las Vegas.

The annual renewal of the Groom Lake secrecy order stems from litigation pressed by former workers who tried to obtain information about the base in the mid-1990s to support their claims they were exposed to toxic fumes at the installation, where they said coatings from radar-evading stealth aircraft were burned in open trenches in violation of federal environmental laws.

Despite the government's attempt to make the installation nonexistent, it has been photographed from nearby mountains and by satellites overhead; it has been written about in newspapers, books and magazines; and Lincoln County officials last year acknowledged they had received a $162,000 check from nowhere to pay taxes by an unknown contractor for work at a top-secret facility that the Air Force only describes as "an operating location near Groom dry lake."

-- KEITH ROGERS

New parking garage

in works at UNLV

There's concrete news for UNLV students waiting for the parking garage they were promised six years ago.

Construction crews earlier this month fenced off and started tearing up a 500-space parking lot that will be replaced by a 1,600-space, four-level parking garage on the northeast corner of the campus. The garage would open by spring 2002, barring any delays.

But problems have been aplenty for the garage, which started out in 1995 as a carrot to get the university's students to start paying for the first time to park their cars on campus.

Their fees were supposed to enhance a borrowed $4 million available to get the project started quickly. Instead, the new parking fees were used to pay mostly for parking lot reconfigurations and to cover payments on the $4 million that originally was borrowed 10 years ago to build fraternity housing.

There have been several groundbreaking dates set and later abandoned for the now $12 million garage. UNLV administrators have struggled over the years to decide how much the school could afford to spend on the garage. Last year, they decided to borrow more money and finance the project mostly through revenue bonds.

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas has been collecting $30-a-year parking fees from students for five years, but parking on campus has not become any more convenient.

Most of UNLV's 22,000 students fight traffic to find spaces on Thomas & Mack lots on the campus' south end. Many parking spaces closer to classroom buildings are reserved for faculty and administrators, who pay higher fees.

The 1,600-space parking garage, which could be expanded by 800 spaces if revenues permit, would offer some relief to students wishing shorter jaunts to class. But garage spots are expected to cost extra.

Additionally, the possibility of increased parking fees for everyone is being studied by administrators faced with having to find extra revenues to cover payments.

-- NATALIE PATTON

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