The chief of staff for U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici hoped the retiring Republican senator could travel to Las Cruces during his last months in office to celebrate a compromise that led to the protection of hundreds of thousands of acres of land in Doña Ana County.
That isn’t going to happen, Steve Bell said in an interview, and he blames the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance for that.
“I really thought we could have this done by now and have this happy celebration,” Bell said. “That isn’t going to happen.”
Bell was responding to comments Las Cruces City Councilor Nathan Small, an employee of the Wilderness Alliance, made at a recent news conference. Small pointed out that Domenici helped secure the creation of a wilderness area in the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque more than three decades ago, and he said Las Cruces deserves the same.
Small was attacking a bill introduced last month by U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce that would eliminate all wilderness study areas in Doña Ana County and instead create new, less restrictive designations for the land. The bill would also require the sale of 65,000 acres of federal land. Pearce’s proposal is much different from what Domenici wanted.
In December 2005, Domenici proposed a plan backed by the Bureau of Land Management that, like Pearce’s bill, would mandate the sale of 65,000 acres of land owned by the BLM. But Domenici’s plan also called for giving the wilderness designation to more than 200,000 acres of land in Doña Ana County.
The Wilderness Alliance wanted more, Bell said, and worked to build opposition to Domenici’s plan and support for its own proposal to designate about 300,000 acres in the county as wilderness and another 96,000 as a national conservation area. That resistance led to the current disagreement that pits the progressive majority on the Las Cruces City Council that was elected several months ago by citizens fed up with the area’s rapid growth against the GOP U.S. Senate candidate, Bell said.
“You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that we have absolutely entered gridlock and nothing can happen because there’s too much at stake politically,” Bell said. “… The upshot is, once again, in my judgment, a group has proved a truth of an old saying that I used everyday for the last 36 years in this job: ‘Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.’”
“Because the Domenici plan was not perfect in their view, they rejected it,” Bell said of the wilderness group. “Then they came up with a proposal they think is perfect, and now they are faced with the prospect of getting nothing.”
Jeff Steinborn, the southern New Mexico director for the Wilderness Alliance and a state legislator, said the group appreciates Domenici’s “legacy of protecting wilderness” but remains opposed to land disposal. Beyond that, he said he had no response to Bell’s comments.
Battle lines are drawn
Domenici’s proposal fizzled out as the wilderness group sold its plan in 2006 and 2007. The group gained the support of area governments and newspapers and hundreds of businesses and other organizations by focusing on protecting the Organ Mountains and opposing the Domenici proposal to sell an area twice the size of Las Cruces for development. The widespread belief that Las Cruces was growing too rapidly — which led to the recent overthrow of the city council — helped the Wilderness Alliance gain support for its plan.
Meanwhile, a group of ranchers and businessmen formed People for Preserving our Western Heritage, an anti-wilderness group that drafted its own proposal that eventually became Pearce’s bill. The wilderness group’s proposal has lost some support, including that of the Village of Hatch. The current list of businesses and other groups that support the ranchers’ proposal is larger than the list of those that support the wilderness group’s plan, but most local governments have stuck with the wilderness group’s plan.
Bell said he knew such polarization would occur if the Wilderness Alliance didn’t get behind the Domenici proposal. He said he warned the group of that during early meetings in Washington.
In the interview, Bell didn’t indicate that Domenici supports the proposal from the wilderness group or that of the ranchers.
Bell said that, while the wilderness group might be waiting for next year — when many pundits predict Democrats will have greater control of Congress — to push through its proposal, there will be no certainty that will happen without Domenici to sell it. He said there’s no stronger supporter of wilderness than Domenici, who has helped secure approval of several wilderness proposals in New Mexico during his 36 years in office.
“In my view, I think that we have set back this cause tremendously,” Bell said.
The chief of staff for U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici hoped the retiring Republican senator could travel to