To generate this
revenue, the department sells or leases Trust land, and the
natural resources thereon, at public auction, and must,
according to its constitutional mandate, obtain the “highest and
best use” from the land. Few would disagree that the idea
of what is the highest and best use of land in Arizona has
changed since 1912, when the majority opinion not only here but
also throughout the West was that desert land had intrinsic
value only insofar as it could be mined, grazed, and irrigated.
For many years, conservation groups and citizen coalitions have
been trying to amend the state constitution to allow a small
portion of Trust land to be permanently removed from the auction
block and preserved as open space, which is a concept that
didn't really exist at statehood, when all that wild open space
in Arizona was, understandably, something to be bridged and
filled rather than celebrated and saved.
The Adamsons are on the front lines of this effort, which has
found a new and optimistic life in the form an initiative for
which supporters are now gathering signatures in hopes of a
statewide vote in November. Bill believes that to have usable
open space within walking or biking distance of his home is
essential to the good life, and it is this belief that has
immersed the former aerospace engineer and marketing executive
in the murky, often disappointing world of State Trust land
reform for the last several years. “To be able to just
walk out your door and for a few hours be out in all this…, ” he
says as he sweeps his hand across the horizon, taking in the
whole wide scope of the thick desert, “… it's really important.
I like civilization, I have always lived and worked where I can
go shopping easily—I’m not some isolationist that wants to live
far away from other people, but I do want to get out every now
and again, and who wouldn’t want to come out here?”
Since 2006, the Adamsons and many others in Green Valley have
lobbied the state, the county, the media, and just about anyone
else who would listen to have this modest stretch of open desert
added to the list of Trust lands proposed for immediate
conservation. They have been successful in this effort, even if
the larger goal of amending the state constitution has thus far
failed. The current initiative, filed in April, proposes
to permanently conserve about 570,000 acres of the most
sensitive Trust land—about 5 percent of the total—and provides a
mechanism through which cities, towns, counties and state
agencies can purchase Trust land for conservation purposes
without going to auction. The West Desert Preserve is on the
current list of the most sensitive land.
While it doesn't exactly appear out of place on that list, this
little plot of desert, with its skinny trails and thick stands
of ocotillo and scrub, its 250-year-old, multi-armed saguaro and
its rare and endangered Pima Pineapple cactus, lacks the flash
of some of the other acres up for conservation. Many of the
other lands on the list are adjacent to famous national and
state parks, federal monuments and well-known mountain ranges
and recreation areas—places with names like Kartchner, Homolovi,
Ironwood, Dragoon, Saguaro, San Pedro, and Grand Canyon. And
while it’s a good idea to protect the state’s last best
places—places that draw millions in tourism dollars—from having
overbuilt mansions and big box retailers right next door, the
West Desert Preserve made the list because it provides a more
modest, but no less important buffer for a community that is
running out of space. “The public is changing,” Bill said.
“The public sees uncontrolled growth and doesn't like what it
sees.”
In the past, the land department has responded, within the bonds
of its constitutional mandate, to changes in the economic life
of the state. Since statehood, according to the
department's own history, the idea of what the “highest and best
use” of the Trust land is has changed from mining to grazing to
agriculture to residential and commercial development in
accordance with which industry was ascendant at the time.
“As the economics of the state have changed, land uses have
changed,” said Ben Alteneder, a spokesman for the land
department, “but our mandate has always been to get the highest
and best use of the land.” And yet, even though the mining
and ranching industries could hardly be considered as vitally
important to the state's larger economy as they once were, some
8 million acres — more than 90 percent — of Trust lands
currently have grazing leases, according to the department.
“Almost all of the lands are under one or more leases for
natural resource uses and commercial development purposes,” the
department's Web site confirms.
It would stand to reason, supporters of reform say, that open
space and conservation —two concepts that enjoy widespread
public support these days — could be considered the highest and
best uses for at least a small portion of Trust land. “We
have tremendous local support,” Bill said, adding weight to the
argument that the general public supports conservation, even if
most people aren't as active and directly engaged with the
desert as the Adamsons are. “We have the support of about
75 percent of Green Valley; people say that they want this area
(and others like it) preserved even if they've never been out
here and will never come out here. They feel good knowing it’s
here.”
This time around, Bill, who describes himself as an eternal
optimist, is even more optimistic than ever about the chances
that the reform initiative will pass. A recent trade-off
between Gov. Napolitano and the Home Builders Association of
Central Arizona, which has long opposed State Trust land reform
and helped defeat a more ambitious reform measure in 2006,
convinced the home builders not to oppose the new measure.
The governor removed provisions in a transportation improvement
initiative that would have put some of the burden for new roads
on developers, as was reported by Capitol Media Services and
others in early May, in exchange for the home-builders' promise
to remain “neutral” on Trust land reform. The state teachers
union, which necessarily opposes any initiative it sees as a
potential drag on school funding, has also reportedly agreed not
to oppose this year’s effort.
And while that's certainly good news and reason for hope among
the initiative’s supporters, the whole debate seems a bit
out-of-touch, even moot, when you’re actually out here on the
ground, walking at a good clip, looking for peace among the
thorny fauna and hearing all that shifting and scuttling life
that thrives, hidden and secret, on this humble little plot of
easy desert, bounded by mining waste rising like mountains, and
yet still so far away.
