Friday, June 13, 1997 | 5:50 a.m.
The federal Bureau of Land Management won't sell any mineral rights for Lone Mountain gravel until it does an environmental impact study on surrounding neighborhoods.
The agency also has agreed to delay awarding contracts for two of the four lots up for sale until a new gravel haul route is built that will take trucks away from the heavily populated existing route.
"We beat 'em," said Clark County Commissioner Lance Malone, who represents about 70,000 residents in the northwest area west of U.S. 95 and north of Cheyenne Avenue. "They're not going to award those bids until we can see exactly what kind of impacts we're going to be faced with."
As scheduled, the BLM opened bids Thursday for four advertised lots totaling 22 million tons of gravel which would have been mined over the next 10 years -- adding hundreds of new trucks to the 1,200 trucks that already barrel along northwest neighborhood streets.
The sale was coordinated with Clark County Public Works Department staff to ensure the excavation's contours conformed with construction needs of the northwest leg of the Las Vegas Beltway and a detention basin.
But the sale caught Malone and northwest homeowners off-guard. They were outraged the BLM didn't notify them about the pending sale because of the effect it would have on neighborhoods. A few people were at the bid opening.
The agency received only six bids, three apiece for the two smaller lots, at 2 million tons each, and no bids for the larger lots, said Mark Chatterton, the district's assistant manager for mineral resources.
Chatterton said the agency also identified the high bidder for each of the two lots -- 69 cents a ton from Diamond Construction, which currently operates in the Lone Mountain community pit; and 66.1 cents a ton from American Sand and Gravel, which operates in the Salt Lake Highway community pit on the east side of the Las Vegas Valley.
Their combined bids eventually will earn the BLM $2.7 million. Because Diamond Construction will be moving to another pit in the same area, Chatterton said, it shouldn't increase truck traffic. But American Sand, new to the area, would add about 20 trucks a day, Chatterton said.
"We still have to evaluate the specifics now of these sales, and prepare an environmental study to determine the impacts and review whether that sale should be completed," Chatterton said.
Malone said the county has no control over what the BLM does, but if it decides to award those bids at a future date, he will stipulate that they not be given out until a new temporary gravel haul route is completed.
The $1.17 million gravel route was scheduled for completion two months ago, but now won't be done until the end of August.
archive
