As The Nevada Lands Task Force debates whether the state should request control of its public lands, one of the biggest questions has been, "Where will the state get the money to manage those lands?"
To help gauge the opportunities, New Nevada Lands President Don Pattalock addressed the task force Feb 28.
New Nevada Lands owns some of the private "checkerboard" lands near the railroad corridor. The task force has discussed a recommendation the state request control of the public land portion of those checkerboard lands.
"We own land from Reno to West Wendover," Pattalock told the task force. "Our ownership in total is 1.25 million acres of surface estate, mineral estate and oil interests. ... Only about 15 percent (of Nevada) is privately owned and New Nevada Lands' holdings account for over a tenth of that privately owned land."
Pattalock said when New Nevada Lands purchased the property in 2011, there were grazing leases on 483,000 acres, along with some geothermal, oil, gas, utility and billboard leases. The company focused on additional mineral and geothermal development.
"Revenues vary depending on times and markets," said Pattalock, adding revenue can also come from land sales, water sales and developments, leases on everything from grazing to land for cell phone towers, billboards, sand and gravel, and utility rights of way.
New Nevada Lands top income generator is mineral leases and royalties.
"Everything has potential value because times change and you don't really know where future opportunities will come from," he said.
Pattalock's comments were focused on the sections New Nevada Lands owns along the railroad corridor. They're called checkerboard lands because the ownership switches with each section of land, from public lands to private lands.
"That creates difficulty for both private land owners and public lands managers," said Pattalock.
He supports the task force members recommending the state request control of the public portions of the checkerboard. He noted there are no forest service lands involved, which would be one less complication.
State control would make it possible to do land exchanges that could combine sections of private land and public land, to the benefit of both, said Pattalock. He said his company has made repeated efforts to exchange some of its private land for public land where they believed it would make sense for both sides, without success.
"We've tried administrative land exchanges, we've tried legislative land exchanges, we've tried county land exchanges," he said, adding his company even hired two employees of the B LM's choosing and gave them to the BLM under a state-wide memorandum of understanding. for the Bureau of Land Management to develop exchanges.
"They went to work every day at the BLM and we paid them every day to work on land exchanges. We've done everything and I sit in front of you today and say that for better or worse we have not exchanged a single acre of private land for federal land."
Pattalock said he believes his company will have success working with the state rather than the federal government.
"I could come in and say we have 12,000 acres that border Rye Patch Reservoir that really should be in state hands and I'd like to trade it for more land near Lovelock and more land near the highway," he said. "If you have the state involved I think there's an easier way to work together for better management."
Contact Joyce Sheen at j.sheen@winnemuccapublishing.net[[In-content Ad]]
