HORACE LANGFORD JR. / PVT Cows are still part of the landscape at the Ponderosa Dairy in Pahrump, but when Focus Property Group starts to develop that land, the cows will have a new home in Texas. Advertisement

Ponderosa Dairy is eyeing property overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for expansion in Amargosa Valley, commodities broker Ed Goedhart said.

Some of the land should be attainable by a modified competitive bid, since it's bounded on two sides by private land, while other land could be transferred by direct sale, since the private land borders BLM property on three sides, Goedhart said.

That will come after an appraiser hired by BLM determines a minimum bid that the dairy has to exceed, Goedhart said.

The largest request will be for two 320-acre parcels, equalling a section, on the north side of Mecca Road. It will be property just north of Ponderosa Dairies Inc., which owns land on two sides of it, he said.

"This would square up that parcel of land on the north side and it would allow us to go ahead and have land that's suitable for an ancillary business expansion," Goedhart said.

(Goedhart serves as state assemblyman for District 36.)

The dairy might finally embark on building a creamery processing facility, packaging the organic milk instead of shipping it off to California. The land could also be used for storing commodities, additional hay yards or as a buffer to residential properties, Goedhart said.

"Right now a person could build right across the street from us and complain about noise and traffic and odor or flies," Goedhart said. "What we're trying to do is be proactive and mitigate that potential from future land uses."

The dairy is cautiously optimistic it will prevail in transferring water rights, after spending close to $500,000 fighting protests filed by the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, he said.

The ability to process milk on site not only will create jobs -- perhaps 50 jobs, Goedhart estimates -- but save on the price of fuel hauling the product.

The other two acquisitions involve smaller parcels. Two 40-acre parcels are being requested on the west end of Amargosa Farms Road by the A.K. Coral Cay Trust. Goedhart said one parcel is surrounded on three sides by private land.

That will add 80 acres to a 280-acre tract, squaring it off at 360 acres, which makes it possible to switch from flood irrigation to pivot irrigation, saving 30 to 40 percent on water use.

"We can pump less water which would also have the effect of lowering our power bills. It usually costs us $50 per acre foot to pump water out of the ground. Our way of looking at it, that cost of power is not going to go down any time soon," Goedhart said.

The other application is by Goedhart Alfalfa, for a 40-acre tract on the corner of Amargosa Farm Road and Tamarack Road. That would also allow for more pivot irrigation.

"It would save us labor having to move the wheel lines every day and it would reduce our water usage by about 20 percent," he said.

The tracts are part of 27,700 acres identified as suitable for disposal in the resource management plan adopted by the Las Vegas BLM office in the early 1990s, Goedhart said.

The Amargosa Valley Town Board is scheduled to review the plans at their 7 p.m. July 31 meeting.

Goedhart said there will be numerous other reviews for desert tortoises, vegetative studies, mineral studies, archaeological studies and others before the land transfers are approved. He estimated it could be a few years.

Ponderosa Dairy already has about 800 acres of pasture for grazing cows, Goedhart said. Another 280 acres are leased from the A.K. Coral Cay trust, 100 acres from Goedhart Alfalfa, along with another 1,000 acres from the Morris DeLee family trust, the Olson family trust and Industrial Mining Ventures, he said.

The additional property would be more for vertical integration than for expanding production.

The dairy is milking about 8,000 cows and has about 2,500 dry stock, which includes non-milking cows and heifers that are raised to maturity at other facilities. Goedhart said the dairy produces about 38 percent of all the milk in the state of Nevada.

"In the paradigm of $4 to $5 per gallon of diesel it becomes more and more difficult to keep that operation going. Our fuel bill since 2002 has gone from $1 million per year to almost $5 million per year. It's becoming increasingly difficult to keep the doors open.

"So we have embarked on some very ambitious expansion plans that are in place and we are implementing them in states that have more economic advantages that are open to economic development such as Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas," he said.

When Focus Property Group decides to start developing the property they bought from the dairy in Pahrump, Goedhart said dairy operations there will be closed and those cows will be shipped to Texas.

Goedhart boasted the dairy was the first landowner to pry away BLM property in Amargosa Valley in a third of a century, outside of an act of Congress.

"When you're in a county with 98 percent federal control and you see the high hoops, the high hurdles put in place, it is no secret why Nye County has struggled to go forward on a path of economic diversification, sustainability and growth," Goedhart said. He added, "If you don't let people have the water they own, I don't care how many economic organizations you have, you will not have growth."