I spent the 4th of July in Searchlight, and Monday night, late, about 10:00 o'clock at night, I came over the hill, Railroad Pass; usually I make those trips to Searchlight and come back in the daytime. This was the first time in a long time that I had come over that hill at night, and it was stunning, what I saw. To think what it used to be, and what it now is: as far as you could see to the left, as far as you could see to the right, were lights, lights of the metropolitan area of Las Vegas. It was impressive to look down on the little town that I used to call "small," Henderson, where I came to go to high school out of Searchlight. It used to be a little industrial community. It is now the second largest city in Nevada. It recently passed Reno as the second largest city in Nevada. That's part of the panoramic view that Landra and I saw as we came over the hill. Gone was the Las Vegas that, as recently as 1970, was the 200th largest city in the United States population list. Now, of course, it is the most popular resort destination in the United States, and perhaps in the world -- Las Vegas, a place that becomes home for a day or two, or three or four, for hundreds of thousands of people from around the world.
The growth in Clark County has been all over Clark County. Little Mesquite has grown 400 percent in the last seven years. We have had to provide land for the city of Mesquite on two separate occasions so that they would not wipe out their greenbelt, to provide a place for them to grow, and now we are legislatively looking to give them more land, because the growth in Mesquite is insatiable, it seems.
People are coming to southern Nevada for lots of reasons. One is their jobs. There is affordable housing. We have no State income tax. There is very nice and warm weather, as we have recognized the last few days. And, of course, there is entertainment galore, and a healthy climate with more than 300 days per year of sunshine. It's a great place to live.
However, all this breathtaking growth has come at a price. In recent years we have begun to see daily traffic jams, once unheard of. I traveled from my office about 7:00 o'clock last night to go up and visit my daughter in the Summerlin area. There was a traffic jam; at 7:00 o'clock t night there was a traffic jam.
Of course, we have developed air quality problems. We have been working for more than a decade now on water quantity problems, water quality programs. We have a vanishing green space. In short, we are a metropolitan area.
So I think it is incumbent on all of us to do what we can to maintain the high quality of life that we have come to expect in southern Nevada. It is a part of our life that we want to maintain. Of course, we have traffic problems; of course, we have water quantity problems; of course, we have air quality problems. But still, it is a great, great place to live, and we have to make sure that we maintain that. We have to make sure that we learn from the experiences of others in other communities, how they developed problems that really got so far out of hand that they couldn't handle them. We need to be able to handle our problems.
The Federal Government owns 87 percent of the land in the State of Nevada. Whether we like it or not, the Federal Government is a player in what goes on in Nevada. But we have to make sure that the Bureau of Land Management, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Transportation, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers -- and on and on, with the different Federal agencies -- that they are partners with State and local government. Frankly, I think that those of us who work in Washington would recognize that that has not always been the case.
One of the reasons for this hearing is to do what we can to make sure that that partnership is something that is now part of the portfolio of all Federal agencies that work in Nevada, that they are partners with State and local governments. The future of southern Nevada rightfully belongs to southern Nevadans, and we have to make sure that the Federal Government understands that. Gone are the days, we hope, when the different levels of government in southern Nevada could get away with working independently. We have to make sure they work with one another.
This committee, under whose auspices we are holding this hearing, is the Committee on Environment and Public Works. I am going to be very fortunate in the next Congress, when I will be the lead Democrat on the committee. I will replace the ranking member now, Max Baucus, who will become the chairman of the all-important Finance Committee. That's why I am very happy that Senator Baucus has seen fit to have one of his staff here today. I am happy that he is here representing the Environment and Public Works Committee, but all of you who are involved in gaming recognize the importance of the Finance Committee, and he will be the lead Democrat on the Finance Committee in the next Congress.