Thursday, June 12, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Quick and Dirty: A notebook of news and politics

Another air raid

On May 23, the Clark County Air Quality board warned "children and residents with respiratory problems to stay indoors due to rising ozone levels in the valley." Health-compromising ground-level ozone forms when sunlight mixes with man-made pollutants.

On May 27, Bob Hall, president of the Nevada Environmental Coalition, filed a motion in U.S. District Court seeking a temporary restraining order against the Bureau of Land Management's June 5 land auction. He says the BLM hasn't complied with federal environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act, and that's "the reason we're sucking up a lot of garbage air." Hall, who also filed a motion against the BLM's November 2002 land sale, wants the feds to study the cumulative impacts on air quality of the sales and other BLM land-related actions (including off-road race permits).

On June 3, Judge Kent J. Dawson denied Hall's request.

And on June 5, after Interior Secretary Gale Norton happily declared, "Let the auction begin," it took two rapid-fire hours for the fat cats to spend a collective $232.2 million on 995 acres. Master-planned developments, easy-come dust-control permits, increased traffic--here we go.

Of course, next day in the news came the dutiful cries from the rest of the community: "Oh my, more growth! What about the drought? Where are we going to get the water? What about air pollution?"

Yeah, what about those things? Amid the nonstop flurry of local construction, it sometimes becomes difficult to appreciate that the land-sale money goes toward buying other Nevada lands to protect from development.--HW

Hey, there, li'l lady

Almost everyone knows the Las Vegas Sun can get rough at times with its political opponents. Just ask R-J columnist John Smith, who occasionally enjoys going a few rounds with Sun Editor Brian Greenspun.

One of the Sun's big put-downs is to label enemies as "minions," which most Las Vegans consider as not bad words, just little bumps on the feet. But last week, Assemblyman Lynn Hettrick, R-Gardnerville, took a broadside. The Northern Nevada Republican is leading the charge against massive state tax hikes, something Greenspun for months has loudly supported.

So consider it a given that in the Sun's newsroom, Hettrick would earn a special moniker--lackey, drone or, perhaps, local yukkie.

No, it was worse. Last week, on the front page was a photo of Hettrick with his laptop, identified as an assemblywoman. Yikes! Are they suggesting he's huevos-challenged? How atavistic.

Lynn. You've been gelded. Go back to the ranch.--LW

City of Asylum

writer arrives

Er Tai Gao, Chinese-born writer and painter, is the second international writer to take advantage of Las Vegas' "City of Asylum" project funded by the International Institute of Modern Letters. The program provides haven for artists and writers persecuted in their homelands. Gao arrived in Las Vegas this week, and will stay for up to two years while he finishes the third volume of his memoir, To Seek My Homeland.

He'll no doubt have plenty of ground to cover: Gao was first imprisoned in China in 1957 after publishing the "seditious" essay "On Beauty," and was sentenced to three years hard labor. He would spend up to 20 years in prisons and work camps as China's "Cultural Revolution" of the '60s overtook the country. In 1991, after being denied permission to leave the country, Gao fled China by way of Hong Kong and garnered political refugee status in the United States in 1992.--AK

Wild East show

Eastern Nevada may seem like a mall-forsaken wasteland to some of you, best to be avoided. But there's something you don't know that developers, water-seekers and space-lovers have known for quite some time: It's the next frontier. That's why Nevada Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign and Rep. Jim Gibbons have been snooping around Lincoln and White Pine counties, formulating ideas for the next public land bill to follow last year's much-touted Clark County Conservation of Public Lands and Natural Resources Act. It could include some permanent wilderness designations and, no doubt, some land-for-development goodies. And that, in turn, is why Nevada's wilderness advocates are inventorying more than 3 million acres of federal wild lands for possible inclusion in their Citizens' Wilderness Proposal for Eastern Nevada, with which they'll try to woo the legislators. Starting next week, the Nevada Wilderness Coalition is giving free slide shows of the wild beauty lurking not far north of Las Vegas: June 16, Summerlin Library, 10:30-noon and 2-3:30; June 16, Sahara West Library, 6-7:30 p.m.; and June 26, Green Valley Library, 6-7:30 p.m. Info: 784-0622.--HW

BevErtain me

The Rio Hotel has officially unleashed its new breed of "BevErtainers"--cocktail servers who take periodic breaks from slinging drinks to step onto a stripper-style platform on the casino floor and either shake their bon-bons or belt out a tune. It's a goofy concept, but it seems to work. The BevErtainers do draw an appreciative crowd, even if their talents are somewhat minimal, and their copper-and-black sequined outfits are downright modest compared with the thong-backed numbers their predecessors had to wear. What's most interesting is that plenty of the new BevErtainers are men who look like they're on loan from the Chippendales show at Club Rio.

The new crew replaces old-school cocktail waitresses who lost their tips-lucrative jobs unless they could demonstrate a talent beyond serving watered-down well drinks.--LC

Shoo, helicopters,

shoo!

Noting that complaints about tour helicopter noise have increased from 20 or so in 1996 to more than 100 each of the past three years, Clark County commissioners have told county Aviation Director Randy Walker to pursue acquisition of a new heliport site off McCarran International Airport and outside the urban area--either in Sloan 10 miles south of the Strip, or Railroad Pass about 20 miles southeast of the Strip.

"Since we're a federally controlled airport, we can't force any helicopters at the airport to move to the new site," Walker advised the commission. "But what we'll do...is entice them through economics and better operational procedures."

But that enticement won't come soon. "I don't want to mislead anybody, but we're still looking at a number of years off," Walker said.--FC

Political burglary

Burglars over the weekend broke into the offices of the Las Vegas Housing Authority, taking financial files of commissioners and key staff members. The break-in, which is reportedly under investigation by Metro Police, occurred in the file room of the accounting office. The only items missing were eight accounts-payable files. Nothing of monetary value was taken.

The incident occurred four days before the housing commission was to vote on whether to fire Parviz Ghadiri, the temporary executive director. The missing files reportedly included those belonging to Ghadiri, commissioners Dewain Steadman, Chris Hoye and Robert Forbuss, former executive director Frederick Brown and authority officials Mike Gifford and Brian Safert.

Ghadiri would not comment on the report.--LW