Are Nevada’s economic development efforts inconsistent and unfair?

Earlier this month, there was a big ribbon cutting ceremony at the new Las Vegas office of SolarCity, which was enticed to open here with a $1.2 million grant from the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED).

At about the same time, GOED announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Province of Alberta, Canada, to collaborate on developing unmanned aerial systems, commonly called drones. Tom Wilczek, aerospace and defense industry specialist for GOED, said the state is applying for an FAA site designation to research and develop drones and “place us squarely in the global market as the leader in this field.”

But you never hear about the ones that get away, as reported in this week’s column, available online at The Ely Times and Elko Daily Free Press.

World Surveillance Group Inc. (WSGI) — a company that designs and builds unmanned aerial vehicles, both drones and blimps, the very thing GOED claimed to be targeting — nibbled at the idea of relocating from Florida to Nevada, but never got hooked or reeled in.

Barry Plans, who handles government affairs and is project manager for WSGI, said the firm plans to open a manufacturing facility for one of its line of  blimps called Blimp in a Box, which would immediately hire 100 workers.

“It can actually see dirt that has been turned over within the past two weeks, looking for IEDs (improvised explosive devices) … is why the Army wanted it like now,” Plans said.

Image from WSGI website

He said the blimps also could be used for border security, and the company is talking a couple of countries about using them to monitor territorial fishing waters to detect foreign trawlers.

“Some of the things that Nevada has that we liked is the fact that we were there before. We were there flying at Mercury, even though I was stepping over rattlesnake holes …” Plans said.

He called the GOED in May but it took a week to reach anyone. That person said he would send information, but Plans never got anything. He called back and left a message. Then the representative left Plans a message saying he was busy with the Legislature.

Finally, the company set up a conference call with GOED officials on June 14.  “Then nothing for two, three, four weeks …” Plans remarked.

No other state showed the lack of interest coming out of Nevada, Plans said.

“We were invited to Texas twice. Not only did they have their entire board at a meeting and we basically described who we were and what we did. They drove us all around the state and flew us to different places to say, ‘Look, these are the communities that we feel you would be best suited for and this is what we are going to do for you.” Houston, for example, has the Johnson Space Center.

Earlier this month, Plans sent an email saying, “WSGI is no longer interested in Nevada.”

Jennifer Cooper, communications director for the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, conceded there may have been some missed connections by both parties. “GOED works very hard on every lead, big or small, to strengthen Nevada’s economic base and we will continue to do everything within our reach to create a positive and attractive environment for businesses to expand in Nevada.”

Frankly, this bidding war between the states has never been proven to show a positive return on investment and many economists call it a zero-sum game of corporate redistributionism — giving some taxpayers a tax break, or even cash, at the expense of other taxpayers.

Read the entire column at Ely or Elko websites.

Newspaper column: How to save the sage grouse — or not

Between Christmas and New Year’s Day in 2011, without any hearings or public notice, the Bureau of Land Management issued its “Greater Sage-Grouse Interim Management Policies and Procedures” with the stated goal of preventing the bird being listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The 8,000-word “interim” document is a nearly impenetrable compendium of bureaucratese, as reported in this week’s column in The Ely Times and the Elko Daily Free Press.

Just three months after the guidelines were issued, using the sage grouse as its excuse, the BLM slashed the number of acres to be auctioned for lease for oil and natural gas exploration in the Ely and Elko districts from 133,000 acres to only 72,000 acres. (As if that weren’t bad enough, the BLM recently told an oil exploration company that its drilling rigs and pump jacks should not be visible from the California Trail in Elko County. This affects 22 of 33 well sites.)

It was pointed out at the time that the biggest threats to the grouse are wildfire and predators, not drillers and miners.

Meanwhile, county commissioners across the range of the sage grouse have been grousing about roads being closed and thousands of acres being removed from public economic use for the sake of the sage grouse.

Another front in the battle was opened recently by a liberal conservation group called the Western Watersheds Project (WWP), which filed a federal lawsuit in Idaho claiming the BLM’s Ely district is not doing enough to protect the chicken-sized bird with the flashy mating rituals. The suit is one in a long series by this group.

WWP describes its mission on its website as “to influence and improve public lands management in 8 western states with a primary focus on the negative impacts of livestock grazing on 250,000,000 acres of western public lands.”

The newest lawsuit accuses the BLM of allowing the construction or reconstruction of over 400 miles of fences, drilling of water wells and constructing reservoirs, pipelines and livestock watering facilities “in direct contradiction to BLM’s own management guidelines, policies and other provisions designed to protect and enhance sage-grouse populations and habitat.”

The suit claims that just about any use of the land is detrimental to the grouse.

A reduction in grazing on federal land in recent decades fueled a rapid increase in wildfires that destroy sage grouse habitat. Prior to 1980 fewer than 25,000 acres of wildfires occurred each year in Nevada. Since then the BLM and Forest Service have cut cattle grazing in half and sheep grazing by 80 percent. It is not uncommon now to have three-quarters of a million acres of Nevada burn in a year.

Rather than killing economic activity on public lands, the BLM should be closely monitoring a sage grouse conservation experiment at the 15,000-acre Devils Gate Ranch in Elko County.

Whose method do you think will save sage grouse?

The entire column at the Ely or Elko sites.

Newspaper column: A funny thing happened on the way to Utopia

While the Nevada Legislature was passing a bill that would require NV Energy to prematurely close perfectly good, reliable, acceptably clean and inexpensive coal-fired power plants, the rest of the country was flocking to coal, as reported in this week’s newspaper column, available online at The Ely Times and the Elko Daily Free Press.

In the first quarter of the year, electrical power generation with coal went up 13 percent, while power generated with natural gas dropped 8 percent. This was due to huge price price for natural gas, which went up 78 percent from March so12 to March of this year, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The iconic polar bear photo.

But in the wisdom of our lawmakers, no matter what the price, coal plants are being replaced with natural gas-fired and renewable energy plants.

Meanwhile, the price of coal dropped four cents per million Btus. 

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, this year the price of fuel for power generation is $2.36 per million Btus from coal and $4.65 for the same generating capacity from natural gas. The cost of renewables is several times higher due to capital costs, though the price of fuel is nil.

Fuel costs in Nevada are passed on directly to the consumer.

At one point NV Energy officials predicted their plan to switch from coal to natural gas and renewables, cutely labeled NVision, would add no more than 4 percent to power bills over the next 20 years. Instead of rising by 32 percent under current plans, rates would climb 36 percent, plus inflation. It is unclear whether that figure took into account the 78 percent spike in gas prices.

Ostensibly the shuttering of coal-fired plants is so that Nevada power customers can do their part to save the planet from global warming or climate change or extreme weather or whatever it is called this week, but realistically power company executives probably believe President Obama will make good on his 2008 campaign promise: “If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them. … Under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

The administration is behind schedule in finishing EPA emissions rules that would effectively ban new coal-fired plants using current technology. In a speech on Tuesday, Obama said he is unilaterally pressing forward on those rules and existing coal plants would be affected, too.

A funny thing happened on the way to the Apocalypse.

According to a New York Times article recently, the rise in the temperature of the planet has been markedly slower during the past 15 years than the 20 years before that, even though greenhouse gases have poured into the air at a record pace.

“The slowdown is a bit of a mystery to climate scientists,” the Times conceded. Their models did not predict this and cannot explain it, but don’t dare question the models.

Can someone please explain why Nevadans must pay handsomely for decades to come to prevent something that isn’t happening?

Read the entire column at the Ely or Elko websites.

Land task force could provide a jackpot compared to paltry PILT

One new law that potentially could have the greatest economic impact on Nevada’s future got little coverage.

The Legislature passed and Gov. Brian Sandoval unceremoniously signed Assembly Bill 227, which creates a Nevada Land Management Task Force to study the transfer of certain federal public lands to the state of Nevada, as reported in this week’s newspaper column, available online at The Ely Times, the Elko Daily Free Press and the Lincoln County Record.

The 17-member Task Force is supposed to report its findings and recommendations by Sept. 1, 2014, to the Legislative Committee on Public Lands “in contemplation of Congress turning over the management and control of those public lands to the State of Nevada on or before June 30, 2015.”

As if on cue, Harry Reid, Nevada’s senior senator and the powerful majority leader of the Senate, this past week announced Nevada will be getting $23 million in Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT), which is intended to compensate counties for non-taxable federal land in their jurisdictions.

Reid helpfully noted, “The Interior Department collects about $14 billion in revenue annually from commercial activities on federal lands, such as oil and gas leasing, livestock grazing and timber harvesting.” What he did not say is that the grand total of PILT dollars doled out nationwide is $400 million. That’s $35 sent to Washington for every $1 sent back as PILT.

What the most powerful man in the Senate also did not say is that Nevada, as in the past, gets a paltry 41 cents per acre while neighboring states get double and triple that amount. Nor did he point out that PILT amounts to only $8.50 per Nevadan, less than Montana’s $26.37, less than Idaho’s $16.50 or Utah’s $12.40.

Instead of sending all those grazing fees and royalties to Washington, Nevada could collect $805 million directly — assuming that 35-to-1 ratio — plus untold property taxes, instead of accepting a meager $23 million trickling down from Washington.

Read the entire column at the newspaper websites of Ely, Elko, and Lincoln.

 

Newspaper column: Your property rights taken by a federal agency? It could happen to you

In 1957, Frank Sinatra warned in song, “Keep an eye on spring/ Run when church bells ring/ It could happen to you.”

Since one federal agency or another controls at least 85 percent of Nevada, one day it could happen to you. You find yourself downstream — literally or figuratively — of one of those agencies, with your property and livelihood in jeopardy, only to discover your property and livelihood are less important than some minnow, bug or weed.

It happened to Victor Fuentes, as reported in this week’s newspaper column, available online at The Ely Times and Elko Daily Free Press.

In December 2010 Fuentes’ land, 40 acres in the middle of the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, was heavily damaged by flooding. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had rerouted a stream but it overflowed its banks during heavy rain.

Annette and Victor Fuentes pose next to a channel running through their church camp in the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in 2009. (Pahrump Valley Times photo)

The property is a retreat for the Ministero Roco Solida Church (Solid Rock) and the stream had been one of the major attractions for visitors to what they called Patch of Heaven. Fuentes is the pastor of the church and operator of the camp.

A year later the Center for Justice and Constitutional Litigation (CJCL) — a division of the Nevada Policy Research Institute — filed a claim with USF&W for actual damages in the amount of $86,000, claiming “negligent and lawless actions” by the agency caused the flooding.

The agency never even acknowledged receipt of the damages claim. CJCL has since filed lawsuits in two federal courts.

In January, USF&W published an environmental assessment that proposes restoring natural and historic hydrology to the area by removing a dam.

Fuentes replied to the assessment that this “would inevitably result in a permanent or regular flooding of our private property resulting in a permanent ‘taking.’” The Fifth Amendment prohibits taking private property without just compensation. (Fuente’s reply to environmental assessment: Fuentes comments)

Though the USF&W claims it wishes to return the water flow to its “original” stream beds, Fuentes notes it is using 1948 data to determine “original,” when maps dating back to 1881 and an 1891 biological inventory show settlers in the area using the water to grow crops on private land granted at the time of statehood in 1864.

It could happen to you.

(Read the entire column at the Ely or Elko websites. For more accounts of government waste, fraud and abuse in Nevada go to Watchdog Wire-Nevada.)

Newspaper column: Under ‘equal protection of the laws’ no one is more equal than others

The Nevada Legislature has passed a bill making it a “hate crime” — subject to enhanced punishment of up to 20 years in prison — to commit a crime motivated by a victim’s “gender identity or expression,” commonly referred to in the vernacular as transgender. It passed the Senate with only a single nay vote and the Assembly with only 11 nays. Gov. Brian Sandoval promptly signed it into law.

It adds to current “hate crime” laws, which already allow enhanced penalties for crimes committed because of race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation and physical or mental disability.

This is clearly disparate treatment under the law, and defies the 14th Amendment, which says no state may “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” as I point out in this week’s newspaper column, available online at The Ely Times and the Elko Daily Free Press.

Lady Justice is blindfolded for a reason.

When a crime has been committed, what difference does it make whether the victim is a member of some favored group? Is a crime against a person excluded from these groups somehow less heinous, less important, less deserving of punishment?

Meanwhile, back in Washington, the singling out of special groups for special enforcement continued.

The House of Representatives passed the “Stolen Valor Act of 2013” by 390-3. The bill’s chief sponsor was Nevada’s Republican Rep. Joe Heck, but it had 127 co-sponsors. Democrats Dina Titus and Steven Horsford voted for the bill. Republican Mark Amodei did not vote.

It was approved in the Senate by unanimous consent.

The bill makes it a federal crime to lie about receiving a military decoration or medal in order to profit or benefit financially, such as government benefits, a job reserved for a veteran or a contract. Violators could be fined and/or imprisoned.

The Supreme Court this past year struck down the original “Stolen Valor Act” — which made it a crime for a person merely to claim to have won military honors he did not — as an unconstitutional restraint of free speech.

This original “Stolen Valor Act” was then changed to criminalize obtaining financial gain via such false claims, enhancing the penalty for what is already a crime.

Depictions of Lady Justice, since the 15th century, have shown her blindfolded, so she may objectively mete out justice without regard to station in life, group identity, wealth, poverty, power, weakness or prior victimization.

Read the full column at the Ely or Elko sites.

Nobody seems willing to address the one solution for making water available along the Colorado River

Settlers crossing the plains and mountains to get to the gold fields of Nevada had to find a way across the Colorado River, named for the thick red silt it carried from Wyoming to the Gulf of California.

Those early pioneers quipped that the Colorado was “too thick to drink and too thin to plow,” as noted in this week’s newspaper column, available online at The Ely Times and the Elko Daily Free Press.

According to Wade Davis’ recently published book, “River Notes: A Natural and Human History of the Colorado,” the region was then most inhospitable.

In 1857, Davis recounts, the War Department sent Lt. Joseph Christmas Ives up the Colorado from the Gulf of California in a stern-wheeler. He eventually ran aground in Black Canyon just south of where Hoover Dam is today.

Ives wrote of his experience: “The region is, of course, altogether valueless. It can be approached only from the south, and after entering it there is nothing to do but leave. Ours has been the first, and will doubtless be the last, party of whites to visit this profitless locality. It seems intended by nature that the Colorado River, along the greater portion of its lonely and majestic way, shall be forever unvisited and undisturbed.”

Then came the dams, whose still waters gave the silt a chance to settle out and leave drinkable water. The question then was how to divvy up that water among the inhabitants of the booming West.

In 1922 the seven states along the Colorado formed the Colorado River Compact. Nevada was allowed only 300,000 acre-feet. Today the state has a population of 2.7 million with 2 million of those in Clark County alone, but the water allocation from the Colorado is still 300,000 acre-feet.

To create a safety net, the Southern Nevada Water Authority laid claim to 84,000 acre-feet of groundwater a year from four rural valleys in Lincoln and White Pine counties, creating a controversy that is expected to play out for years to come.

Davis writes: “Farmers in the Imperial Valley pay for water only $17 an acre-foot, allowing them to grow cotton, alfalfa, and rice in a desert where temperatures hover for days above 120°F and less than three inches of rain falls in a year.”

Therein lies the rub. The total costs for the SNWA water grab could reach as high as $2,000 an acre-foot.

Lake Mead

A Bureau of Reclamation study released in December projects the demands on the Colorado will outstrip supply by 3.2 million acre-feet by 2060. The report looked at options for resolving the shortfall — including ocean and brackish water desalination, wastewater reuse and importation options. “Future planning will require careful consideration of the timing, location, and magnitude of anticipated future Basin resource needs,” the study breathlessly proclaims.

The Colorado has been named America’s Most Endangered River, reports Gary Wockner, director of the Save The Colorado River Campaign, breathlessly in an op-ed piece for the Las Vegas newspaper earlier this week. In some places the Colorado is drained dry, he claims, while in others its flows are so depleted fish and wildlife are endangered.

Building Hoover Dan

Wockner bemoans projects such as the Las Vegas water grab, as well as proposals for dams, reservoirs, pipelines and energy projects that he says will drain the last drops of the Colorado.

“The good news is the federal government has stepped up its efforts to address our endangered river,” Wockner cheers. “But now it’s time for Congress to get into the act, too.  Congress needs to provide more funding for water conservation programs throughout the basin, needs to support investments to increase the efficiency of water projects that are already built, and needs provide funding to promote and protect the Colorado River itself.”

Not once do the aforementioned government study, Davis’ book or Wockner’s op-ed even hint at the most obvious solution: The free market.

Allow the municipalities, industries, farmers and ranchers with existing water rights to buy, sell and trade in an open market. Why would a farmer continue to grow rice or cotton with his $17 an acre-foot water, when he can sell it to the water authority in Las Vegas for, say, $200? Instead of allowing that allotment to flow through the dams and canals to Yuma, Las Vegas could take that share from Lake Mead.

No need for a water grab. Problem solved.

Read the entire column at the Ely or Elko website.

So, renewables are already saving Nevadans money, right?

In today’s Elko Daily Free Press a lady from something called the Interwest Energy Alliance takes issue with conclusions I reached in a recent column in which I questioned the need to raise the state’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) — the percent of renewable energy that NV Energy must sell each year by law.

Sarah Propst — executive director of the Interwest Energy Alliance, which is an industry trade association that represents renewable energy companies in the West, including Nevada — claims “experience has demonstrated that renewable standards save consumers money and create jobs and economic growth opportunities in rural areas,” without, as Harry Reid did in a similar response to another column of mine, so much as a single fact or figure to back up this specious claim.

She points out that fossil fuel-fired power plants are subject to price volatility, while renewables have a steady cost over the life of the plant. She is correct. But right now the price volatility in natural gas in down and the long-term price of renewables is several times higher and will not go any lower.

Then Propst claims renewables are already saving Nevadans money. “Despite its flaws, the numbers show that the RPS is already working,” she writes. “Nevada money spent to purchase out-of-state fossil fuel energy sources decreased from $1.7 billion in 2008, to $1.5 billion in 2010 and 2011 combined.”

That is a 12 percent decline in cost.

During that timeframe, the price of natural gas delivered by pipeline declined from nearly $12 per thousand cubic feet in July 2008 to just over $4 in July 2010 and July 2011. The price of coal delivered for electric utilities increased 9 percent. NV Energy produces about 1,000 megawatts with coal and 5,100 from natural gas.

I think the savings was due to that volatility she mentioned earlier, not renewables.

All those wind turbines do more than ruffle a few feathers

This week’s newspaper column, available online at The Ely Times and the Elko Daily Free Press, discusses one of the problems with wind turbines.

While making a presentation recently to a meeting of the Audubon Society in North Las Vegas, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologist Brian Novosak flashed on a screen in the darkened room a stark description of the fowl carnage taking place at the Altamont Pass Wind farm in the Diablo Range east of San Francisco — between 2005 and 2010, 55 to 94 golden eagles were killed each year, as well as upwards of 718 burrowing owls and up to 9,300 passerines (your basic songbirds).

Simulation of what windmills may look it east of Searchlight and near Lake Mohave, home to bald and golden eagle.

“The Fish & Wildlife Service is getting more aggressive with the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act,” Novosak said.

Closer to home is Pattern Energy’s Spring Valley Wind farm near Ely, where a golden eagle was recently killed.

A BLM spokesman said Spring Valley wind has a mortality threshold for golden eagles of one.

If another golden eagle is killed a Technical Advisory Committee will meet and recommend what mitigation to take, which could curtail operation of turbines or even shut down turbines.

The federal government’s disparate treatment of various industries whose operations have resulted in the deaths of eagles or migratory birds has become an issue of late. While an oil well driller was indicted for killing a single bird, owners wind turbines have been untouched.

This past week the Interior Department gave the go-ahead for a second utility-scale wind farm on public land in Nevada. This one is east of Searchlight, near Lake Mohave, home to bald and golden eagles.

Meanwhile, a bill has been introduced in the state Legislature to increase the percent of electricity that must come from renewable generation by 2025 from 25 percent to 35 percent — with no regard for cost or consequence.

This video is from 2007:

Read the full column at the Ely or Elko websites.

Someone put a burr under Harry’s saddle

Welcome to the fact-free zone that surrounds Harry Reid.

Writing in today’s Elko Daily Free Press, Nevada’s senior U.S. senator and senate majority leader, Harry Reid, unleashes a barrage of criticism at a run-out-of-town editor and the Nevada Policy Research Institute for deigning to question the economic impact provided by his cronies in the “green” energy scam.

Without so much as fact or statistic in spitting distance, Harry bloviates about his critics who say “renewable energy in Nevada doesn’t create jobs” (just $4.6 million in subsidies for each permanent one), “is bad for the environment” (intermittent “green” energy increases CO2 emissions), “and will cause your utility bill to skyrocket” (only 34 percent).

It must have been the comparison of his speech to the Nevada Legislature to George Orwell’s “1984” that got his goat:

“It conjures images of Orwell’s ‘1984’ newspeak and doublethink with the three slogans of the Party plastered on the wall — ‘War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.’

“Not only was everything Sen. Harry Reid said in his speech on the floor of the Nevada Assembly this past week about ‘green’ energy false, it was the diametric opposite of the truth. False is Fact.”

To which Harry replied:

“But the truth won’t stop the doublespeak coming from the likes of shadow organizations such as the Nevada Policy Research Institute and run-out-of-town editors like Thomas Mitchell. To them up is down; left is right; and false is fact.”

At least show some originality, senator. And you might brag a bit and point out that the running out of town occurred one week after your re-election. I can’t help but be suspicious that some spiteful politician won an election bet.

Nowhere does Harry mention that “green” energy projects kill jobs by sucking money out of the private sector. Nor does he say anything about all the campaign contributions he and Obama get from “green” energy companies.

Without a shred of fact to back up his claim, Harry blithely boasts, “The renewable energy industry has been a bright spot during the recent economic downturn.”

It was a bright spot for his cronies — like Duke Energy honcho Jim Rogers, whose company recently forgave the Democratic Party $10 million in debt from the convention in Charlotte, N.C. — but not for NV Energy’s ratepayers and all taxpayers, who are footing the bill for uncompetitive renewable pipe dreams from politicians like Harry Reid, Barack Obama and Al Gore.

Obama and Reid visit a solar project at Nellis Air Force Base. The project saves the Air Force $1 million a year, but cost $100 million to build and has a life expectancy of 20 to perhaps 30 years. Harry even bragged at one of his renewable energy dog and pony shows about what a good deal this was for the Air Force. (AP photo)