woman: wayne met with irrigators, environmentalists, and city and county and state people and the tribe. he met with everybo. thene went backo senator reid, and i am told he said, "well, it's going to be nearly impossible, but we might be able to get a deal here." reid: they were all together on what they wanted done.hey just didn'tnderstand how they could work together, and tt's what we were able to do, was kind of t them together. for the first time in the history of this dispute, we were able to have people sit in the same room. initially, they didn't talk much-- [click] [silence] woman: we were pretty much locked in a room for about 4 days running. reid's office was facilitating it with, i remember, cake, and i'm not sure why we had cake, to try and keep

us all sweetened up? the thing that came out of that really was the preliminary settlement agreement, which was an agreement between the tribe and the power company. female news anchor: well, the war has raged on now for 100 years, but today, the fighting stopped, and a peace treaty was signed. male tv reporter: the agreement was reached after a lengthy set of negotiations sponsored by senator harry reid. tv anchor: according to the agreement, the water can't be used for new growth, only in times of drought. and in times when the water is plentiful, it will be used to improve flows along the truckee river for the pyramid paiute tribe's cui-ui fish. reid: i think it's really a good deal for everybody. i don't know that we have a single lor. male news anchor: but still to be determined is how fallon farmers, both on and off the reservation, will fare. they have not signed off on the agreement. chisholm: the farmers in tcid

began getting nervous about how the discussions were going. they either walked out or were locked out, depending on who you ask. schank: there was lots of things that impacted the truckee-carson irrigation district. the largest was they gave an opportunity for the united states fish and wildlife service to buy water rights. people who are on the fringes of being able to maintain their farming business basically are forced to sell out. a lot of the farmland has been purchased, the water rights stripped. it's had a tremendous effect on the area. reid: i went from being the most popular person in rural nevada to being the most unpopular. the people of fallon detested me. i came there once for an event. they were just awful.

schank: when senator reid came down, there was a few of the old-time farmers that got together, and one of them rented a gorilla suit. he was not pleased with it. reid: ernie schank is a farmer, a big farmer, and he was one of my big obstacles 'cause he opposed everything i tried to do. he and people--there were other ones--that hung me in effigy. schank: i don't think that's a true story. uh... i, uh... i have to--i have to couch what i say now. heh heh heh! christensen: the farmers left the negotiations for two reasons. one was that they believed, and they still believe, that the water is theirs. the second is that they thought that they could win by

fighting. what they didn't realize was that the politics of power had shifted all around them, and it wasn't going back. schank: all of a sudden, rural nevada, which once had a metrolitan areas, now we at a severe disadvantage. chisho: and you see that all across rural america these days, where rural communities are feeling under threat. the challenge is that in many cases, these rural communities were we need to think about how to right wrongs, but we also need to consider how we help these communities make adjustments. schank: this story is only one of many that are going o it's all of the western states and even in the midwest now. and little towns that once thrived are just ghost towns

because the people have gone to the city. christensen: there's a strain of american environmentalism that cities and agriculture in anuilt environment where they never should have been, that sees the destruction of the environment and the destruction of native people's cultures and traditions and livelihoods. the negotiated settlement showed that a new deal could be crafted to re-engineer these systems to restore the relationship between people and the environment. chisholm: the truckee river is profoundly different. there are hundreds of thousands of new cottonwood and willow trees.

lahotan cutthroat trout are now recovering. there are fish now upward of 30 pounds being found at pyramid lake. there's talk about restoring them back to spawning runs in the truckee river. the wetlands have water rights. managers can call for that water when they need it. pyramid lake is recovering. it's a very different setting. to be an environmentalist working on these issues now is you can be in a position of hope. you can see things getting better. ely: oftentimes, you have settlements in any country, or you have an adjudication in a country, then it's all done. it's on paper and life goes on and nothing changes. that's not been the case here. the lake is up, the region's been able to grow, everyone's benefited from it, and so you see results soon. we saw results immediately after

this settlement was done. praise the lord. it's good for everyone. christensen: in the end, reclamation did provide for growth in the american west, but not always through agriculture and maki the desert bloom. in fact, the explosion of urban growth in the las vegas valley in the late 20th century was made possible by another reclamation project... [film projector whirring] the hoover dam, whicwas built in the 1930s to provide water and power to california, arizona, and nevada. las vegas really went through 4 distinct phases of growth. [slide projector clicking] it started out as a small frontier town. the building of hoover dam and the expansion of a wtime industry and economy fueled the second phase of urban growth in

las vegas. [lively jazz music playing] christensen: with the postwa period, we see the emergence of the mob-run gambling city. [music tempo quickening] christensen: and then, in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, the expansion of corporate gaming and the growth of an enormous metropolitan area. [lounge music playing] and reid was a key player throughout that riod. was instrumental in the gaming commission, in cleaning up the gaming industry... reid: .stated that you wt to him and you said, "look, i want you to break his legs." rizzo: no, i did not. rizzo:hank you., mr. rizzo.

christensen: ...making it acceptable for wall-street investment... [opening belclanging] which led to a massive influx of capital and the transformation of las vegas into the city we know today. [tap shoes clack] women: yee-ha! christensen: family-friendly, resorts for young people... [crowd clamoring] christensen: resorts for retired people. reid: i watched las vegas grow, not realizing at the time that it was growing like it was, but as i look back, it grew very rapidly. [bell dings] i'm from searchlight, and i went to school in henderson, which, at that time, was quite small, so vegasas always big to me, and i probably didn't recognize the growth that was taking place before my eyes. man: we're growing, in the last couple of years, by any measure you want, faster than everybody could have predicted. [power saw whirring] female tv reporter: a new house is built every 20 minutes in

clark county for a population in flux--6,000 new residents each month. male tv reporter: las vegas, with a population of 1.6 million. it's the fastest-growing metropolis in the country. christensen: this explosion of population also led to an increase in demographic diversity. las vegas became increasingly latino, asian american, on top of its historic african american population and the white population. [overlapping chatter] it became a vibrant, working-class union town where service-industry jobs paid a good middle-class wage that people could survive and thrive on, raise their families, enjoy the outdoors.

man: nevadans take great pride in the outdoor recreational opportunities that our great state has to offer. fortunely, nevada has 87% publicly owned lands, which means that most of the recreation must take place on our public lands. regardless, protecting the multiple use of our lands in nevada is very important to our citizens. [traffic noise] baca: development in nevada, and southern nevada in particular, started to happen fairly quickly and you could see this shift. you had the increase in the city of las vegas, north las vegas, city of henderson, and clark county butting up against the desert and starting to encroach on native habitats and desert areas. there needed to be a

solution to come in to balance these interests of growth and development with maintaining our native landscapes. christensen: the solution that was first used to overcome this problem was land swaps. a developer would find some private land worthy of protection--say, up in the mountains--and offer to swap that land to the federal government in order to be able to develop one of the public land parcels in the las vegas valley. reid: they would give the federal government that land, and they would get something in exchange for it. as time went on, it became a corrupt situation. [hammering, power saws whirring] christensen: the danger and fear here was that growth in the las

vegas valley could come to a screaming halt. reid saw this problem and set about to craft a solution. man: icongressthe staff is everytng. if y have a good staf you're gonna have a successful congressman or senator. man: we have both of our united states senators, harry reid and john ensign wi us. reid: i didn't know they were gonna be here. i'm ready to leave. aren't you? [laughter] lopez: i was with nator ensign for 14 years. he was a very pragmatic republican senator. ensign: the usda can certify... reid: john ensign was a conservative republican, but our relationship in the senate was just terrific. i never had anyone to work with in the senate that was more reasonable and agmatic than john ensign. ensign and i had a deal. if you have a problem with anything going on in my staff, you call me. i would do the same with him. and as a result of that,

our staffs knew that they were to work together. lopez: they brought me in the room with the top staffers from each office. we were told that "you will rk together. you will not disparage each other. the staffs cannot say anything bad about each other, and if you do, you will get fired. regardless of whatever differences we have, we are gonna work together for the benefit of the state of nevada." and that set the whole tone, and that set the whole tone for all the accomplishments that we achieved on a bipartisan basis. reid: we had to do something differently, and that's where the snipla came in. christensen: sniplaba. lopez: snipplema. chisholm: snipplema. christensen: the southern nevada... bacapublic land... lopez: management act. chisholm: snlama. anderson: truly horrible acronym. baca: it's one of the weirdest acronyms, but i love snplma, yeah.

ensign: this bill fixes the faulty land exchange process. lopez: john ensign washe sponsor of snplma at the time, and senator reid and senator bryan were the senate champions for getting that legislation through. reid: we'll change the way we do things in the state of nevada regarding land. anderson: snplma, as it's lovingly referred to, was the seminal piece of legislation that created the land salparadigm r the lavegas valley lopez: the concept was instead of exchanging land, just auction public land to the highest bidder. that way, u bring market forces, and you just put it out in the open and you auction land. man: opethis bid at 250,000. open this bid at 11 million. reid: have a public auction d none of this trading business. man: now 60... number 179 higbidder. baca: it creates a level playing field for everybody. man: he says he's out. 14,200,000. close the bid here at $14,200,000. reid: the money that came from the land would go back into

family sensitive things in nevada. baca: everything from lake tahoe, building parks and trails, restoration projects, investing in visitors centers. man: parking areas, access that allow people to get into the outdoors. lopez: over its life, snplma generad over $3 billion. man: 47... that man's a poker player, i think. christensen: in many ways, snplma built on the successes of the negotiated settlement on the truckee river that you could craft a new deal between a growing urban area and the environment. this is perhaps an example of government at its best. it works and people don't even notice it. chisholm: for the first time, it's really connecting las vegas with the environment. and for the first time, you're beginning to see how, through these investments, las vegas is getting woven back into that landscape.

christensen: while snplma was a bipartisan compromise that worked in urban nevada, crafting the same kinds of solutions in rural nevada was not so easy. chisholm: so the 1990s were a time of great optimism for the environmental movement. i mean, you had a democratic president, you had bruce babbitt as a secretary of the interior. reform of grazing, reform of reclamation, reform of mining were all being discussed and being considered. and it seemed possible that types of changes would be made. but there was also, in some ways, a powerful wind that was blowing from rural communities that were concerned about the overreach of the environmental community. in rural nevada, there's a lot of distrust of government and of harry reid in particular.

in 1999, harry reid was a democratic senate whip. he was a master of senate procedures and policies, and he helped push through a wilderness bill in northern nevada. it was really the environmentalists' dream of what black rock-high rock should look like. part of the reason that occurred is that the hunting, off-road, mining community didn't think it would pass, and they didn't feel like they needed to engage. of course, harry reid surprised his staff and got it passed. baca: black rock-high rock was a wilderness area that had been created largely from the conservation voice, but that voichad not taken into consideration some of the other interests and other stakeholders, such as hunters and fishermen and some of the more active-use folks who'd been using it for a long time. johnson: i am native american by

heritage. i'm an engineering geologist by profession. i'm an outdoorsman by passion, really. my earliest memory in life is my father butchering a deer on the kitchen table in our cabin. i've hunted from the time that i could hold a rifle and hold a bow. i have lived it. i have loved it. we were in opposition to that bill. the bill offered us a number of problems, as it did to much of nevada. for hunters, it was disastrous as it was for certain miners, certain ranchers, et cetera. for example, the impacts on hunters--the wilderness boundary was set at a particular road. it would be a 5-mile wilderness

across the valley to a mountain range that we formerly hunted with no access to it at all. all of our jeep trails were cut off. sportsmen, for example, chukar hunters, for a day hunt or for a 2-day hunt to walk 5 miles across the valley to get to the mountains, to climb up to a spring, to even find chukar or other upland game, it was a physical impossibility. so it essentially eliminated entire mountain ranges from hunting. christensen: and this wasn't the first time wilderness bills had come under criticism in nevada. in fact, they had been increasingly controversial since the 1980s. man: i'm here with some full- and part-time residents of jarbidge, nevada. we're standing on a road that doesn't go anywhere anymore. it used to go to some places that these people were quite fond of. woman: we need this road for multiple uses. we need it for fishing and

hunting and fuel for the winter months, and we can't get to 'em unless they open this road up. man: the attraction for us was the scenery and the accessibility. boy: we can't have picnics and go cping. we need to be free so we can hunt with a vehicle, 'cause older people who don't like to walk can't climb up the mountains and hunt for deer like the younger people can. johnson: the senator took a great deal of criticism--in my opinion, rightfully so--for the wording that was present and the boundaries that were present and the restrictions that were placed upon this land. but to his credit, he realized that at least some of this criticism could be valid. reid: yes, a lot of them were. johnson: he sent one of his top aides, kai anderson back to

nevada. anderson: working on wilderness bills with reid was a great lesson for me and sort of outreach to a whole range of constituencies, many of whom weren't super thrilled that my boss was in the senate or that i worked for him. johnson: right off the bat, i mean, i had a significant level of distrust because i felt this had been improperly rammed down our throat. anderson: once you sit down with people and talk through issues, you pretty quickly come to the conclusion that even if you're not politically aligned, all the people i worked with out there love the state of nevada. johnson: there is no place like nevada. anderson: there's sort of two different venues for having those sorts of conversations. one is the sort of classic open public meeting. you take all comers. those are important, particularly from the perspective of making sure that you're connected with everybody who would have an interest, who's paying attention in a fashion that they have an opportunity to he a say.

we would go until nobody else wanted to talk. i've missed flights doing those sorts of meetings. people do like to talk, and it's important that you hear them. [cheering and booing] that said, we didn't resolve most of the details of those wilderness bills. a lot of the work ended up happening after those public meetings, with sort of priva side conversations. some people view things happening behind closed doors as untoward, and i think that's a real misconception. and the reason i say that is, people aren't inclined to share their bottom line in public. they're gonna tell you what their preferred course is, but they're not gonna tell you what they can live with. a--it's not human nature, and b--it's not very strategic to have the other side understand exactly what you're willing to do.

we would sit down with folks, whether it was in the ranching industry or the mining industry or in the wilderness community and say, "look, tell us what is most important to you. tell us what you're most worried about and te us the truth. we're not gonna share that information with the folks that you view as your opponents." johnson: kai met with me first, and then later i assembled representatives of a number of sportsmen groups and individuals who knew the area. kai, to his benefit, not only met with us and the department of wildlife, but went in the field with ranchers who had similar concerns. and we expressed our concerns to kai. we laid out on this conference table detailed maps of each of the wilderness areas. we delineated needed access points on existing roads into the wilderness areas that had been closed off.

reid: if they had a complaint that was valid, we had maps with us, and we'd just chge it right there. they'd call me, "is that ok?" i'd say, "sure, go ahead and do that." johnson: at best we wouldn't get everything we asd for. anderson: at the end of the day, when we cut a deal, we're gonna try to cut a deal that does as good a job at minimizing the things that you're coerned about and maximizing the things that you want. johnson: this process came to an end when an amendment was passed through congress. [gunshot] quite frankly, we got most of what we wanted as did the ranchers, as did the department of wildlife, as did some of the mining interests. and quite frankly, we have some disappointments. all in all, with that amendment, my conclusion is it reid: my work on wilderness damaged my popularity significantly in rural nevada,

but it all turned out for the better. because after i got my wilderness legislation done, i would go to these communities. no one everaised wilderness as an issue, because once it's in place, people are proud of it. johnson: probably the closest i will ever come to a religious experience is being on my horse on the crest of a mountain range in nevada with a tremendous vista in front of me. you are just at one with the earth. christensen: there are a lot of different ways of using political power. one of the ways is bringing people together to craft a solution,

but sometimes it's using power behind the scenes. sometimes it's making a phone call. man: one of the most important energy sources for the nevada power company is the reid garer powerlant, located st off interstate 15 near moapa. the plant supplies nearly 40% of the powefor the las vegas community. man: reid gardner was the main power plant to take electric to las vegas when they first put it in. they located it out here next to the reservation, which is not unusual. it really just mored into e big llution factor that just put jury onto the rez. man: problems first arose in the unfinished boiler complex, when a variety of construction tradesmen began complaining of respiratory problems 2 weeks ago. woman: when i was growing up, i didn't realize that we were being affected. my friends, inking back on my life, they

would cough all the time. my brother was working down there. he'd always be covered in black. his clothes would be black, his face would be black. heied of an enlarged heart. lee: you know, it's a coal-burner, so they had coal ash and they put it up on the hill. they actually put it everywhere. and of course, when it dried out, the dust blew, it would look like a big gray cloud blowing off from top of the hill right on us. baca: in the 2000s, there was a proposal to expand a coal ash pond at reid gardner, and there were proposals to add additional coal-powered power plants around

nevada. woman: this is all the statements from peop of 2006. baca: there was a significant amount of backlash from the tribal communities and from conservationists regarding this potential expansion of coal power. chisholm: it was really sierra club's "beyond coal" campaign that put the focus throughout the country, but particularly in the west, on closing down coal plants. lee: the sierra club stepped up, and they had the resources, the attorneys, scientists, and they come in and they was helping the tribe fight this battle. woman: it is a david vs. goliath fight. fewer than 400 moapa paiutes taking on nv energy, trying to shut down the reid gardner coal plant. man: here's the bottom line. you at home pay for electricity made at reid gardner with your money. moapa paiutes say they pay for that electricity with their lives. lee: we filed a lawsuit against nevada power, the tribe and sierra club, and that's where things got real.

man: i am paiute. i am proud of who i am, and i'm proud of all of you to be here. thank you very much. raborn: they brought home their message through a 50-mile walk from the moapa reservation to las vegas that took 3 days. the tribe ultimately succeeded, convincing the public, convincing the utility that owned the plant that it was time for them to close the plant after over 50 years. [explosion] reid: and so i started looking at that power plant--exacerbated heart conditions and everything else. so i made up my mind i was gonna get rid of coal in nevada. i read in the paper that they were going to open 4 new coal-fired generating plants i nevada. i called mary, i called