A proposed trade of 4,300
acres of private land for 21,000 acres of federal land surfaced publicly
Thursday to positive reviews from Pima County's chief executive but mixed
reviews from environmentalists.
News
Service March 19, 2003
By Tony Davis
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
A proposed trade of 4,300
acres of private land for 21,000 acres of federal land surfaced publicly
Thursday to positive reviews from Pima County's chief executive but mixed
reviews from environmentalists.
Ex-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and broker Philip Aries are representing developer-investor Donald Diamond and his Diamond Ventures company in an effort to conduct a three-way land exchange.
The purpose is for the public to obtain key parcels for the Ironwood Forest National Monument and the Las Cienegas Conservation Area, supporters of the plan say.
The deal would require congressional approval and formal appraisals. It would involve land currently owned by private parties and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. It has been discussed privately among federal and Pima County officials, Babbitt, Aries and environmentalists since November.
County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry discussed the proposal Tuesday in a meeting with Babbitt and Aries. Babbitt also was in Florence this week discussing the plan with Pinal County officials.
On Thursday, Aries said the proposal is in its exploratory stages and that he and Babbitt hope to work with environmentalists to find a compromise that everyone can support.
Babbitt, now a private attorney in Washington, D.C., was traveling Thursday and couldn't be reached.
"Everything we've offered is really outstanding, environmentally sensitive properties that someone or other wants to buy for open space," Aries said. "The pieces we've selected for acquiring are lands that have previously and many years been on the list of BLM lands slated for disposal. Criteria No. 1 is that it has to meet Bruce Babbitt's environmental test."
But environmentalists Daniel Patterson of the Center for Biological Diversity, Jenny Neeley of the Defenders of Wildlife, Matt Skroch of Sky Island Alliance and Christina McVie of Desert Watch said Thursday that while they haven't yet taken a stand on the entire proposal, they will not support trading the 20,000 Pinal County acres.
That's because the acreage lies in a federally proposed recovery zone for the endangered pygmy owl.
"I drove over all that area in late February and it is some of the most beautiful, consistent, desert upland ironwood forest habitat I've seen," McVie said. "It supports a real ecosystem function and the loss of that area or compromise of it could have a domino effect."
From Pima County's perspective, it's a positive exchange, Huckelberry said Thursday.
"In a sense, it allows us to continue some conservation of pretty important properties that ultimately need to be conserved."
Aries said that if Babbitt and Diamond cannot persuade a majority of environmental leaders to support the Pinal County trade, they will drop it and focus only on Pima County land.
Specifically, Diamond and his Diamond Ventures development company would get about 20,000 acres of BLM land in Pinal County, about 6 1/2 miles east of Florence. He would receive an additional 1,240 acres at Kolb and Sahuarita roads south of Interstate 10 near Corona de Tucson, a longtime unincorporated suburban area.
In return, he would buy the following private holdings and trade them to the Bureau of Land Management:
* Four parcels totaling 4,155 acres inside or very near Ironwood monument.
* About 2,790 acres on the Empirita Ranch, a parcel straddling the Pima-Cochise County line that has been the source of a land use dispute in the past year before the Pima County Board of Supervisors.
* Nearly 1,700 acres inside what's known as the Missing Link, an area north of Las Cienegas that federal officials left out of it for further study in 2000 when Congress approved creation of the conservation area.
He would also reimburse Pima County for $1 million it paid last year for the 640-acre Lord's Ranch inside monument boundaries.
In addition, Aries said Diamond would try to "do anything we can to be helpful" to the federal government in obtaining permanent development rights known as conservation easements to protect two other sensitive parcels.
One is the Bellota Ranch northeast of Tucson. The other is the Babocomari Ranch in the San Pedro River Valley south of Interstate 10.
He said he didn't know this early in the process exactly how such easements would be obtained for Bellota, which the city of Tucson owns but has put up for sale.
Diamond in 1997 was involved in a land exchange that swapped 711 acres of his land to Saguaro National Park-West in exchange for 4,322 acres of BLM land outside Phoenix. Federal appraisals found the deal made financial sense for the federal government, but Phoenix environmentalists opposed giving up the BLM land.
While the meetings about this proposal haven't been open to the general public, Babbitt is supporting getting the exchange approved through federal legislation because he believes that to be the ultimate public process, Aries said.
U.S. Reps. Raśl Grijalva, D-Tucson, and Jim Kolbe, R-Tucson, were traveling from Washington, D.C., to Tucson on Thursday afternoon and were unavailable for comment.
* Contact Tony Davis at 807-7790 or verdin@azstarnet.com.