LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Tuesday that, other than lands set aside for conservation or national parks, publicly owned property should be eligible for multiple uses.
"The rest is for multi-use," he said in an interview overlooking the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. "It was meant for mining and grazing and timber and housing. It was meant for those things. It's America's balance sheet and we've got to get the appropriate return on it. So my job is to work for the American people and literally, the law says that these lands are for the benefit of the use of the American people."
WATCH| Steve Sebelius talks to the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum about public lands
Burgum's visit to Las Vegas — part of a swing through western states — included a roundtable at Red Rock, a meeting with Gov. Joe Lombardo and an event at the South Point hotel-casino. He met with officials from the Bureau of Land Management, including BLM Nevada chief Jon Raby, as well as rangers and firefighters.
Burgum said his department is doing everything it can to make land available for affordable housing in Las Vegas, something sought by developers and Lombardo.
"Affordablility is key in this country. It's key to this administration and not only getting land for housing here, but also speeding up permitting for timber. I mean, we stopped developing timber in our country," he said.
Lombardo has repeatedly urged the federal government to release Bureau of Land Management land in the Las Vegas Valley to local governments, for use in affordable housing. In order to get land, it must be "nominated" by a local government, assessed and then approved before it can be transferred and construction can begin.
A former BLM official told Channel 13 recently that BLM releases were too small, took too long and were too costly, but BLM officials here in Nevada said they have worked hard to remove all bureaucratic obstacles standing in the way.
But while Las Vegas residents generally focus on land for housing developments or parks, others in the state rely on public lands for their livelihoods.
One such person is Varlin Higbee, a Lincoln County rancher who uses public lands to graze his cows and calves. He came away from a town hall led by Burgum encouraged about the government's support for ranching.
"The federal agency, the BLM, is willing to work with us for multiple use, which is a good thing," Higbee said. "Past agencies haven't always been that friendly to us. In fact, like I said earlier, 70% of the livestock industry here in the state of Nevada is gone since 1960; it doesn't exist anymore. And you're wondering about livestock shortages, and people are wondering where their meat is coming from."
Higbee said if he could ask the government for anything, he'd ask for "an assurance that we're going to be here longer than just the short term. I mean, administrations change in their whole outlook on the way they look at grazing, it just changes. Some kind of security, some kind of stability to know that in the future, it's still going to be there," he said.
In addition to public lands and grazing, Burgum also discussed the ongoing standoff over allocation of water from the Colorado River. He said a meeting of basin-state governors in Washington, D.C. weeks ago almost reached an agreement, but differences remain.
"And now we're coming up on some deadlines and so at some point we have to just announce an operating plan for the year," he said. "I keep encouraging the states to come to an agreement, but if they don't, if they start litigating, it's going to end up and some judge is going to make a decision. And I think that's likely, in my book, would be a much worse outcome than the governors themselves all coming to some kind of an agreement where everybody's got to make a compromise, everyone's going to have to make a sacrifice."
