Friday, April 10, 1998 | 10:33 a.m.
Paul Janeway and his wife Laurie who live on Apple Orchard Way about a mile west of the old Sunrise Mountain landfill say they can't enjoy their backyard because of rotten egg odors blowing past on the spring wind.
"Moreover, it's an unlined landfill and the ground water could be contaminated," Janeway said Thursday to environmental officials gathered on a neighbor's patio to begin finding solutions to the issue of the now-defunct landfill's future.
The Bureau of Land Management has found low explosive levels of methane gas, common to all landfills, toxic and cancer-causing chemicals in soil and air samples taken at the Sunrise site in the past six months. The BLM owns the 720-acre landfill, but leased it to Clark County for a municipal landfill in the 1960s.
"There's a lot of nights and days we can't even come out on our patio or invite people over because of the smell," Connie Rushmore, the patio's owner, said, referring to the rotten odor of hydrogen sulfide.
Others complained of migraine headaches, sick children, and days absent from work and school.
Sue and Matthew Ising live across the street from the Rushmores and worry that exposure to possible toxic gases and contaminated ground water will cause diseases in their children.
"Are we, several years from now, going to have rare cancers in our children?" Matthew Ising asked.
No one has answers yet. Federal, state and local agencies promised to work together to ensure the community is comfortable with its old landfill. It is too soon to consider covering it with a golf course, officials said, although after problems are solved, it could become a recreation site.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Director Felicia Marcus said it will take cooperation at all levels of government to measure the extent of pollution problems and find ways to clean it up. She praised officials for working together, rather than pointing fingers at each other.
Ground water wells need to be drilled into the mountain's complex rock to find out if the landfill has contaminated the Las Vegas Wash, through which Southern Nevada's drinking water supply is fed, Marcus said. Three earthquake faults plunge through and under the dumpsite, located two miles from the wash.
The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection is in charge of ordering the county and the dump operator, Republic/Silver State Disposal Co., to drill monitoring wells.
A method to collect and burn off or sell methane gas has to be in place by July 1999, Marcus said. It is too soon to talk about enforcement actions by the EPA. Suburbs surrounding old landfills are common and there are solutions, she said.
A proper cap will have to be installed, since the clay cover required by current regulations doesn't work in the desert. When wet, the clay swells, then dries out and cracks like a dry-lake bed.
Nevada Sens. Harry Reid and Richard Bryan, both Democrats, invited the officials to talk to residents and visit the landfill.
"Our No. 1 concern is health and safety," Reid said, as he held a white handkerchief over his nose and mouth against the hydrogen sulfide fumes which left him gasping on top of the landfill.
Mike Moran, the BLM's hazardous waste director in Las Vegas, measured methane levels 10 times less than the limit required to evacuate from the site. He warned those on the tour not to touch anything.
"We want to make sure that people's concern are not buried along with 31 years of garbage and legal documentation," Reid said, looking into one of three black lagoons where dumping occurred outside landfill boundaries.
"I think it's one hell of a mess," Bryan said. "Neighbors don't want this to be the Las Vegas version of the Love Canal."
The senator was referring to toxic waste found in a Niagara Falls, N.Y., neighborhood that drove hundreds of families from their homes in 1972 which led to stricter federal environmental laws.
BLM Assistant Manager Mark Chatterton said consultants began studying the landfill two years ago and discovered cracks in the cover 100 feet long.
Instead of 2-to-3 feet of cover, the BLM poked into garbage pits 3 inches below the surface. Some pits contain 500-foot-tall piles of garbage. "That's a 50-story building," Reid marveled.
Inside some of the pits, scientists measured methane at 830 times the level it should have been.
The BLM maintains the landfill was not closed properly or on time. Garbage burial was stopped in 1993, but a cover was not in place until March 1995. The Clark County Health District approved the extended time to place a cover.
Chief Health Officer Otto Ravenholt defended the actions taken by the Health District saying methane gas does not pose a threat to people.
"That does not pose a threat to the neighborhood, in our judgment," he said.
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