Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Masto tried again and failed in 2024. Her proposal to sell off tens of thousands of acres of desert around Las Vegas did not make it out of Congress and onto President Biden’s desk.
This legislation inevitably requires more consumptive uses of the Colorado River in places where it’s never been before in Southern Nevada.
And while Las Vegas is a world leader in water conservation, we must be prudent in how we develop the desert as changing water cycles bring about the type of uncertainty and chaos we are now seeing in Los Angeles.
Senator Cortez Masto has been trying to push this bill since 2017. And with a developer-friendly Congress and presidential administration, we will be keeping a close eye on what comes to the fore in Nevada.
And, to the surprise of many, the U.S. Supreme Court announced this week that it would not hear a challenge from the State of Utah that questioned the federal government’s authority to manage public lands in the Beehive State.
However, Utah Senator Mike Lee will be chairman of the powerful Energy and Natural Resource Committee. As we’ve surmised in the past, Lee and Cortez Masto want the same thing: public lands sold to private interests in their home states.
The Nevada Senator is a member of that committee and often touts her bipartisan bona fides.
Will she and Mike Lee dream up a public land sell off package? Time will tell.