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Thursday, July 13, 2000

Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Auditors call for end to agencies'

land swaps
A report follows others in saying public acreage is being
traded for less valuable private holdings.

By Michael Weissenstein
Review-Journal

Nevada's largest landlords squandered millions of dollars in a long string

of unequal land trades throughout the West, federal auditors reported
Wednesday.
The Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service gave
away public lands worth far more than private holdings they obtained in
swaps meant to add ecologically vital areas to the nation's portfolio of natural
treasures, according to the report by the General Accounting Office,
Congress' investigative arm.
The BLM and the Forest Service generally use trades to obtain
environmentally sensitive lands from developers, who receive public parcels
near growing urban areas in return.
The report prompted Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., to call for an
immediate halt to all land exchanges. Such a move could thwart developers'
plans to obtain hundreds of acres of vacant BLM land south of Las Vegas.
"The report clearly shows that these federal agencies are failing to
protect the public's wallet and their environment," Miller, the House
Resource Committee's ranking Democratic member, said in a statement.
"In light of the GAO's report, I am calling on the Forest Service and the
Bureau of Land Management to immediately suspend their programs."
The agencies hold about 53.7 million acres of Nevada land, about 75
percent of the state.
More than half of the swaps criticized in detail by the 16-state audit were
in Nevada. All but one of those were Las Vegas-area exchanges that were
the focus of three earlier investigations by the Interior Department's internal
auditor.
The GAO audit focused attention on a planned swap near Elko that
would exchange what auditors called 140 BLM acres of prime winter
antelope habitat for 10 acres of city-owned land. Homes would rise on the
BLM land while the 10 acres would accommodate a parking lot and
equipment storage area for a BLM field office.
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Agriculture Secretary Dan
Glickman, who supervise the BLM and Forest Service, did not respond to
Miller's call Wednesday.

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The two secretaries generally support land exchanges as a valuable way

to protect the environment, agency spokesmen said.
The GAO report is the first to recommend Congress consider
completely ending the land-trade system, the federal government's primary
tool for obtaining private land, instead of improving the system.
"We believe that the agencies' program improvements cannot address the
inherent difficulties associated with land-for-land exchanges, and that the
agencies' desire to continue exchanges is more than offset by their programs'
continuing problems and exchanges' fundamental inefficiencies," the report
said.
Ending or delaying swaps could hinder the Lake Las Vegas Resort, an
upscale project developed by the billionaire Bass family of Fort Worth,
Texas. The resort wants to obtain 6,648 acres of environmentally sensitive
land statewide and swap it for 1,341 acres of BLM land around its property.

A Lake Las Vegas spokeswoman declined to comment on the GAO

report Wednesday.
A swap moratorium would stall a smaller plan to trade 240 acres close
to the Railroad Pass Casino near Boulder City for about 1,600 acres near a
Northern Nevada wildlife refuge.
In three reports between 1996 and 1998, the Interior Department's
inspector general found unequal land trades might have cost taxpayers more
than $12 million by giving away public land for private property of lesser
value.
Many of those findings focused on land appraisals that either
underestimated the value of the public land or overestimated how much the
private holdings were worth.
A 1998 federal law, the Southern Nevada Public Land Management
Act, replaced the land swap system in Clark County with auctions of BLM
land. Auction proceeds go into a fund used to buy environmentally sensitive
holdings and improve recreational facilities on public lands.
BLM began negotiating the Railroad Pass and Lake Las Vegas swaps
before the land act's passage, and they would be allowed under a
grandfather clause.
The ongoing swaps should not be halted despite the GAO's finding that
the exchange system is flawed, said Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., a sponsor
of the 1998 act.
He echoed statements Wednesday by the Interior and Agriculture
departments that the land exchange process is an invaluable tool for
protecting ecologically valuable private lands threatened by development.
"The public might miss an opportunity to acquire a piece of property for
public owners that might be irreversibly lost because of the circumstances,"
Bryan said.
State BLM officials said the GAO report mischaracterized the Elko land
swap and said the public land to be traded away already was surrounded by
residential development that made it poor wildlife habitat.
The GAO report criticized other Nevada land exchanges:
--Swaps involving land near Red Rock Canyon National Conservation
Area and Mount Charleston, in which the Forest Service acquired private

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property overvalued by $8.8 million.

--A Lake Tahoe swap that conveyed to the Forest Service private land
that was not appraised under federal guidelines and that overestimated the
value of private land traded to the government by as much as $10 million.
--An exchange with the Del Webb Corp., which underappraised federal
land it wanted by more than $9 million. The land was reappraised after the
Interior Department began an internal investigation.
--A deal in which an unidentified landowner acquired 70 acres of federal
land in Clark County appraised at $763,000 and resold it the same day for
$4.6 million. The same person received an additional 40 acres valued at
$504,000 and disposed of it the same day for $1 million.

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