EDITORIAL: New Las Vegas airport grounded by red tape

It’s going to take more than three times as long to build a new Las Vegas airport as it did to construct Hoover Dam. It’s a case study in government red tape run amok.

It’s rare to find proactive government bureaucrats. But Clark County officials have long been laying the groundwork for a new airport. In 2018, county commissioners approved an environmental impact statement for an airport in Ivanpah Valley, well south of Harry Reid International Airport, between Primm and Jean.

It looks as if the so-called Southern Nevada “supplemental airport” is going to be needed in the foreseeable future. Reid set a record for traffic last year at 52.7 million passengers. That topped the 51.5 million passengers it welcomed in 2019. It was a nearly 29 percent increase over last year. It’s projected to hit 63 million to 65 million around 2030, which is the maximum capacity.

That’s both good and a major problem. Tourism remains the economic lifeblood of Southern Nevada. Being able to handle a growing number of visitors is essential to maintaining a healthy economy.

But Clark County Department of Aviation Director Rosemary Vassiliadis recently noted that the earliest a second airport could open is 2037. That seven years after Reid is set to max out.

“We know if everything goes perfectly, with our rate of sustainable growth, we feel that we’re going to start getting hit with delays on the airfield by the end of 2029 or maybe by 2030,” she said. “Unfortunately, it means painful years for airlines and that we need a second commercial airport.”

There may be some work-arounds to patch the gap in terms of evolving air-traffic control procedures. But the matter sheds a light on the consequences of an overactive administrative state.

It took five years to construct Hoover Dam. The scale and scope of that project is almost unimaginable today. Workers had to create diversion tunnels for water and build a temporary dam. High scalers — working 800 feet above the ground — used jackhammers to prepare the canyon walls. It took around 5 million barrels of cement, enough to build a road from San Francisco to New York City.

Compared with that, building a new airport 90 years later should be a breeze. But major infrastructure projects these days typically face interminable delays thanks to permitting and other bureaucratic issues. The county must identify and address environmental concerns. The FAA and BLM have to sign off. Various state agencies and regional transportation officials will have a say as well.

These delays will drive up taxpayer costs.

It’s doubtful the magnificent Hoover Dam could be built today, let alone completed in five years. And given how Democrats have fought tooth and nail against streamlining the federal permitting process, the hurdles to building a new airport in the desert may prove difficult to overcome no matter how far ahead airport and county officials plan for the region’s future.