EDITORIAL: The Bureau of Land Management should stop dragging its feet on Ash Springs

For decades, Ash Springs north of Alamo was a popular spring-fed swimming hole in rural Lincoln County. That ended in July 2013 when the Bureau of Land Management chained the gates and closed it down, citing potential dangers for swimmers.

“The structural instability as well as bank erosion and undercutting has caused a concern for public safety,” the BLM’s Victoria Barr told the Lincoln County Record at the time.

The BLM assured residents that the plan was to address the issues, hold public meetings in the area to determine a path forward and eventually reopen the attraction, which is about 100 miles north of Las Vegas. Ms. Barr told the newspaper it could take “weeks at this point” to conclude the repairs.

If only. Almost four and a half years later, Ash Springs remains closed, and locals are growing impatient as the issue becomes a symbol for bureaucratic indifference and inertia.

On Monday, the Review-Journal’s Henry Brean reported that the BLM still has no timetable for reopening the site. A draft environmental assessment is nearly finished, BLM official Shirley Johnson said, but when that will be available for public review remains anybody’s guess.

Ms. Johnson also told Mr. Brean that the BLM has run into new delays involving construction of a new access road to Ash Springs that would cross private property. “She said the BLM doesn’t have permission from the private landowners for visitors to drive across their land to get to the spring,” Mr. Brean reports.

Problem is, the owner of the property, Cody Whipple of Pahranagat Valley, told Mr. Brean that he wants to see Ash Springs opened as soon as possible and has “never objected or said anything negative to the BLM” about the road construction.

Mr. Whipple and others in the area envision a more controlled environment for Ash Springs, including “entrance fees, occupancy limits, regular operating hours and ‘family friendly’ rules of conduct,” Mr. Brean notes. Fees would be used to pay for maintenance and upkeep.

But everything hinges on the BLM. And at this point, the agency’s commitment to reopening Ash Springs appears lukewarm at best. Why else would the BLM make an issue about an access road when there doesn’t appear to be any conflict at all? It took 20 years to build an Egyptian pyramid. The BLM can’t deal with Ash Springs in five?

Commenting on the Lincoln County Record’s July 26, 2013, story on the closure, one reader’s online post appears highly prescient. “If anyone actually believes the BLM will ever reopen Little Ash,” the reader wrote, “I have some ocean property out in Cherry Creek for sale.” He added that the agency had long wanted to shut the site down and “now they have found their excuse to do so.”

Whether the BLM has been engaged in a cynical deception … well, time will tell. But if the agency hopes to quash such skepticism, it will stop the foot dragging and get on with the business of reopening Ash Springs.