Pahrump Vacant Land Owners Plan Zombie Lot Protest for March 21

Hundreds of Pahrump property owners who pay taxes on land they cannot legally build on are preparing to take their frustration to the streets. The Pahrump Vacant Land Owners group has organized the Zombie Lot Protest for Saturday, March 21, from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the corner of Highway 160 and Highway 372, with participants gathering on the public sidewalk in front of the Pahrump Nugget to press Nye County for concrete action.

Patricia Robb, the group's lead advocate, has framed the problem in stark terms. "Thousands of Pahrump property owners cannot legally use their own land due to lack of water and sewer infrastructure, which has created what is now known locally as the 'zombie lot crisis,'" Robb said. "Owners and residents will come together to rally Saturday, March 21 on the public sidewalk in front of the Pahrump Nugget to demand solutions."

The term "zombie lots" has taken hold locally to describe titled parcels that are taxed as real property but remain unbuildable because water and sewer service has never reached them. Residents and organizers describe the problem as affecting thousands of parcels across the Pahrump area, where infrastructure promised to early buyers never materialized. Long-time out-of-state landowner Carol Milke made that point directly when she addressed Nye County commissioners at their Feb. 18 meeting, saying promised infrastructure never arrived. Milke urged the county to revise its master plan to restore original land-use intent for owners who purchased their lots before later zoning changes took effect.

The county's position, stated most plainly by Nye County District Attorney Brian Kunzi last summer, places responsibility for the problem outside the county's jurisdiction. "Rezoning is not going to be the answer to this," Kunzi said. "These zombie lots can only be developed if they have utilities and the county is not responsible for utilities." County staff echoed that framing at the Feb. 18 commission meeting, pointing to the Water District Committee as the body currently working on potential solutions, and noting that any regulatory change could move through an existing code amendment process, which can be sponsored by a commissioner or initiated through a planning department application.

That answer has not satisfied the Pahrump Vacant Land Owners. The group has continued pressing the county to identify, in specific and public terms, which agency or process holds the authority to make zombie lots buildable. Speakers at the Feb. 18 meeting also called for greater transparency about previous pilot decisions and clearer timelines from both water and planning authorities, none of which have been publicly committed to.

The March 21 protest is intended as a direct escalation of that pressure, described by organizers as a visual display of displeasure and a call for remedy. With the Water District Committee's work still undefined and no commissioner having formally sponsored a code amendment addressing zombie lots, the group has decided that public visibility is the next lever to pull.