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Show I LtoGSteeEi iE$!8tfiiG8 fita mH to Bim HI V'-u i ' i : n I i fv :-.' , : n -v. t f 'f f i i j I I V r vsi v ' The Nevada Cattlemen's Association today filed suit to put an immediate halt to preliminary MX planning activities of the Air Force in Nevada and Utah. In a com -plaint filed in the United States District Court In Salt Lake City the Nevada cattlemen, cattle-men, joined In the suit by the Utah Cattlemen's Association Associa-tion and the Wool Growers Associations of Nevada and Utah, charged Secretary of the Interior James G. Watt and Director of the Bureau of Land Management Robert F. Burford with acting without with-out legal authority when they executed a Cooperative Agreement with the Air Force on May 15, 1981 authorizing auth-orizing the Air Force to conduct con-duct various tests on the public pub-lic lands In the Great Basin In preparation for the selection sel-ection of deployment sites for the 200 MX Missiles and 4600 shelters. The complaint alleges that the drilling of wells, trenching, trench-ing, testing the ground with explosives, borings, digging of test pits, cone penetration penetra-tion tests and the use of off-road off-road vehicles will destroy the fragile native desert vegetation veg-etation and cause the spread of the deadly weed Halogeton glomeratus throughout the Great Basin, posing a clear and present danger to cattle and sheep. It also charges that the Interior Department failed to hold public hearings before signing the Cooperative Coopera-tive Agreement with the Air Force and, In so doing, THE SWEET ADELINES: These Barbershop singers can belt out a ballad, harmonize or bring tears with an Oldie, and make the halls ring wherever they go. They performed before "The Fantasticks" last Thursday Thurs-day at the County Fair. violated the Constitutional rights of the cattle ranchers and sheep ranchers to due process of law. Finally, it is alleged that the numerous activities of the Air Force authorized by the Interior Department, constitute a major federal action having impacts on the environment and that a programmatic environmental en-vironmental impact statement state-ment must be prepared and filed. In announcing the first of pected to hold hearings throughout Nevada on the protest after President Reagan Rea-gan makes his decision on the basing mode for MX. If the decision is made to proceed pro-ceed with deployment in Nevada, Nev-ada, the hearings will be held by the State Engineer and are expected to last several months. After the State Engineer En-gineer decides if and how much water the Air Force will be allowed to draw from the ground, the losing side is expected to appeal to the courts. The resolution of the battle over Nevada's water is expected to extend another two years. The cattlemen are gearing up for that conflict. long, drawn out battle In the courts. The next stage of litigation will take place when the Air Force files its final environmental impact statement. "The $20 million, 1800-page draft environmental Impact statement filed in December by the Air Force was so woefully inadequate that it cannot possibly be cured by the final. Our Governor Robert List and the Nevada Cattlemen's Assocationhave requested the Air Force to circulate a new draft for public pub-lic comment, but the Air Force has declined to do so. It is significant", charged Eyre, "that the Air Force could not even tell us how m uch of our scarce, precious water would be required to build the most massive construction con-struction project the world has ever known and to house as many as 150,000 construction construc-tion workers and their fam -ilies in the Great Basin. The threat to our water supply is one of the most potent dangers of the MX project", said Eyre, and "ranchers and farmers throughout western states are watching what occurs in the Great Basin with great interest." Over 300 challenges have been filed with the State Engineer En-gineer of Nevada against the applications of the Air Force to draw water. The State Engineer's Office is ex- a series of legal challenges to the proposed MX deployment deploy-ment in the Great Basin, E.E. Eyre, President of the Nevada Cattlemen's Association, Assoc-iation, charged that the spread of Halogeton, "poses a clear, direct, and deadly threat to the continued economic ec-onomic viability of the livestock live-stock industries in two states. Everywhere the Air Force and its contractors have been we are beginning to see the spread of this poison poi-son weed." The President of the livestock live-stock industry group added, "the Air Force promised us that impacts would be "manageable" "man-ageable" and pledged that they'd be honest with our ranchers about the impacts of the MX. They have failed on both counts." Eyre noted that since th Eyre noted that since the Air Force began it's initial ini-tial survey work, "Our ranchers experienced an unprecedented un-precedented growth explosion explo-sion of Halogeton the poison poi-son weed, in areas that have been disturbed." The cattlemen have long noted that many experts have severely criticized the proposed pro-posed MX land based deployment de-ployment mode as Inconsistent Inconsis-tent with the nation's legitimate legit-imate defense needs. The cattlemen of Nevada have been planning their legal leg-al assault for the past nine months and have been attempting at-tempting to raise funds for what Is expected to be a '? 1 i " , 1 j .. .ft I . . t: ' r f ' l ; ' f j ', i --. fr1" j i i I A i '; ? . 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