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Cross land swap begins

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http://www.vvdailypress.com/cgi-bin/newspro/viewnews.cgi?newsid1080568602,8008,

Cross land swap begins
By KELLY DONOVAN/Staff Writer

The early stages of the land swap designed to save the Mojave Cross have started.

The federal government has started doing the required land surveying and may be done with it in a couple weeks, National Park Service spokeswoman Holly Bundock said last week.

After the land exchange is complete, the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post at the Veterans Home of California-Barstow will acquire ownership of the disputed cross and the acre of land it's on, in the Mojave National Preserve.

A federal court in 2002 found the cross unconstitutional because it is on federal land.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is surveying land to be swapped on the Park Service's behalf, Bundock said. The survey process includes measuring the property and preparing a legal description of it.

After the surveying is done, Bundock said the Park Service will contact the parties involved and move to the next steps: ordering title on both parcels; appraising them; and doing environmental surveys of the land to look for all manner of things, from desert tortoises to hazardous chemicals.

Wanda Sandoz, a preserve resident who helped make the land swap possible, said last week she'd like the exchange to be wrapped up by June, when she and her husband are moving to Yucca Valley.

The Sandozes are donating five acres of land they own in the preserve — separate from the land where they live — to the federal government in exchange for the government's one-acre gift to the veterans group.

The exchange probably won't happen as soon as the Sandozes would like, however. Bundock estimated that the remaining phases of the process could take about 16 more months.

Until the swap is complete, the National Park Service is trying to keep the cross covered to comply with the U.S. District Court's ruling against its display.

Last week, Sandoz heard from a friend who drove by the cross that the box that had been covering it was gone, and hoped that the Park Service was able to take it down.

Bundock said her agency doesn't know who removed the box, but the action is considered vandalism.

"Someone managed to take the one-way screws out so they could ride the box up over the top of the cross," she said.

Maintenance workers spotted the missing box and started working to fix it Friday, she said.

A box was used to cover the cross after a tarp had been removed multiple times.

The litigation over the cross is on appeal in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, although it isn't known if the court will rule on it.

After President Bush signed the appropriations bill that contained the land swap language, the U.S. Justice Department argued that the legislation makes the case moot and asked the Court of Appeals not to issue a ruling.

The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California, which represents the two plaintiffs, argued that the legislation itself is unconstitutional and asked the court to rule on the case.

Nothing has happened in the case since January.

Staff writer Kelly Donovan can be reached at 256-4122.
 
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