Word: nye
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Coloring the hostility is a large dose of the paranoia that has seeped into American political discourse over the past year, especially since the Oklahoma City bombing. These days it seems no conversation in Nye County can conclude without some reference to Waco and Ruby Ridge. "What these have done," says Carver, "is show how the oppressive bureaucrats think they can run over the tops of the American people." He thinks both incidents contributed to the presence of guns among the spectators the day he bulldozed the road. He is convinced federal agents are monitoring his travels. During a speech...
Hostility toward the Federal Government suffuses Nye County to a degree that an Easterner might find hard to believe. Even though most of the county is under federal control, residents still have more breathing space than most Americans--only one person per square mile, in contrast to 3,000 per square mile in California's Orange County. And despite federal regulations, Nye Countians can still graze the government-owned meadows, fish the lakes and hunt the forests. But these days the climate is such that every incident, however minor, seems to reinforce the case for rebellion. Jim Merlino, director...
...conversation with a visitor, Nye County administrator William Offutt at first tries to minimize the county's rebelliousness. "I'd say there's maybe a dozen people who are really charged up on this issue," he says. But as the conversation evolves, his own hostility becomes clear, as does that of three other county officials present in his office. They spin out stories of federal snubs and restrictions, including the BLM's refusal to allow the county to run a phone wire through a roadside ditch to the county landfill without first having an archaeological appraisal...
Federal employees feel caught between empathy and the law. Ted Angle, an associate district manager of the BLM who once supervised its Nye lands, says the National Historic Preservation Act tied his hands. The law requires an archaeological review for any construction project on federal lands; the BLM's recommendations must in turn be reviewed by a state historic-preservation office, which must then report back to the BLM. "It's just not a negotiable thing for us," he says...
Offutt and his staff are still smarting from what they see as the latest vengeful snub by the government. Jim Nelson, supervisor of the Toiyabe and Humboldt national forests, was scheduled to meet with Nye's commissioners one day this summer to try to ease the mounting hostility. That morning one of Nelson's employees delivered a letter to the gathered commissioners stating that Nelson would not be coming after all; he says now he couldn't attend because of the pending Justice lawsuit. The commissioners weren't terribly surprised, says Rachel Nicholson, a county attorney also present in Offutt...