New proposed Vegas airport faces organized opposition
Project managers from the Federal Aviation Administration and the Bureau of Land Management overseeing environmental reviews for the prospective construction of the Southern Nevada Supplemental Airport south of Las Vegas fielded questions at the first of three scoping meetings Tuesday night.
A 20-minute presentation preceding a public comment period provided a few new details about the multibillion-dollar project targeted for completion by 2037.
But most of the more than 100 people attending a virtual meeting stayed on the sidelines for comments realizing that scoping meetings — the first opportunity for public comment on the proposal — are more about making sure the joint lead agencies are gathering all the information they need than providing remarks for or against the airport.
That tone could change Wednesday when the FAA and the BLM conduct the first in-person meeting at 5 p.m. at the East Las Vegas Library, 2851 E. Bonanza Road. A third meeting is scheduled Thursday night in Primm.
Prior to Wednesday’s scheduled meeting, Southern Nevada conservation and environmental justice leaders plan a press conference at the East Las Vegas Library to highlight their opposition to the airport.
Representatives of the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe Chapter and Make the Road Nevada plan appearances at the event leading into the public meeting.
The group represents the first organized opposition to the airport project.
Representatives of the group say they plan to show up with signs of opposition, dressed in desert wildlife costumes.
Whether their comments will be accepted is unclear since the FAA’s David Kessler explained at Tuesday night’s meeting that the scoping sessions are mostly a forum to assure that the FAA and BLM have reached out to all interested organizations before going to work on drafting the environmental impact statement and a Resource Management Plan Amendment for the proposed airport.
Kessler said the joint agencies are taking scoping comments until Sept. 5. After that, the agencies, the Clark County Department of Aviation and their consultant, Cincinnati, Ohio-based Landrum & Brown Inc., will publish a draft report by June 2027. A series of workshops and public hearings would be scheduled on the draft report in July 2027.
The agencies would then revise the report by March 2028 in hopes of securing a final Record of Decision by May 2028. If a favorable Record of Decision is produced, Clark County could then go to work designing the airport and all the projects associated with it.
On Tuesday night, Kessler mostly answered questions about the process, taking a few notes on which agencies and organizations the FAA and BLM should reach out to as they develop their plan.
Few comments addressed the scoping process and while the online meeting went two hours, there were several gaps of silence in the second hour of the meeting.
Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.
Comments on scoping
David Kessler of the Federal Aviation Administration recommended that people who have comments on the FAA-BLM scoping process send them in by Sept. 5, the deadline for comments.
People can email comments to SNSAEIS@landrumbrown.com or mail them directly to David Kessler, AICP, c/o Federal Aviation Administration, Western-Pacific Region, 777 S. Aviation Blvd., El Segundo, California 90245; or Joanie Guerrero, Realty Specialist, Bureau of Land Management, Las Vegas Field Office, 4701 N. Torrey Pines Drive, Las Vegas, Nevada 89130; or SNSA EIS/RMPA, Landrum & Brown Inc., 4445 Lake Forest Drive, Suite 700, Cincinnati, Ohio 45242.
