County falls behind in billings to curb emissions

Friday, Dec. 26, 1997 | 10:05 a.m.

The county's Air Pollution Control Division fell months - and in some cases years - behind in its bill collecting, records show. The charges that weren't billed are supposed to be paid by companies to offset pollution they emit.

In August, the offset-credit program for 1996 was out of balance by $1.1 million, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Friday.

Officials with the division blame the delinquent billing on a lack of staffing, and said they have retrieved or accounted for most of the money and credits for last year after a staff member was hired four months ago specifically for that purpose. But they admitted the account that tracks offset charges and emission fees from 800 companies and agencies was still off by $231,240 this month for last year's emissions.

David Hoch, a permit specialist in charge of the emissions inventory for the pollution control division, described the task of maintaining the account as a "tracking nightmare."

He said many billings and assessments that were supposed to be sent out in 1994 and 1995, after the offset program was revised in 1993, have not been accounted for under a centralized computer system.

"The bottom line is, we don't know what the correct balance is. We could be talking some large numbers here. It could be potentially in the millions," Hoch said last week.

Division Director Michael Naylor acknowledges the problem as well.

"We knew we should be getting the assessments taken care of sooner or later," said Naylor, who has run the division since 1976.

Naylor said it will take at least four months to balance the books for 1996 before billings for 1997 emissions can be sent. His assistant, Michael Sword, said at least half the facilities have not been billed for 1996 emissions, even though Robert Folle - the only staff member who handles billing - has been catching up.

Files on companies kept by the division also document other problems with permits for some of the county's biggest polluters. They include:

-Nevada Power Co. operated cooling towers since 1993 under an incomplete permit that has allowed the company's Clark station to emit hundreds of tons of particulates without paying to mitigate the emissions. The cost to the county for those emissions is $383,968. Sword sent a letter to the company last week to begin the assessment process.

-Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. was given a nine-year extension to release carbon monoxide even though the Environmental Protection Agency's policy requires having emission controls in place before a facility goes online.

-Another manufacturer, Lasco Bathware, near Moapa, was issued what the EPA considers an invalid permit because Clark County required inadequate controls on the emissions of volatile organic compounds.

The EPA lists the Las Vegas Valley as a serious non-attainment area for both carbon monoxide and inhalable particulates.