Landfill runoff pollutes LV Wash

Wednesday, Sept. 23, 1998 | 11:39 a.m.

The Sierra Club is urging the Clark County Health District to quarantine a swath of debris that rode floodwaters more than four miles from the closed Sunrise landfill into the Las Vegas Wash.

The household refuse, 55-gallon drums, intravenous tubes, drug bottles and construction debris left in the wake of a severe thunderstorm Sept. 11 poured 3 feet deep through a channel that was drying out Tuesday.

"This is an environmental catastrophe," said Randy Harness, the national vice chairman of conservation for the Sierra Club in Nevada and California. "This goes to our drinking water."

Because of environmental mishaps, the Las Vegas Wash has become a conduit for treated sewage, polluted valley runoff and contaminated groundwater into Lake Mead, six miles upstream from Southern Nevada's drinking water pipe intakes.

Harness examined sheets of black plastic liner torn from the landfill and swept into the flood channel along with giant boulders. The rocks and the liner were tracked to the wash from the dump site, which has been inactive since 1993.

"Whatever was in those containers is in the wash now," Harness said.

"It's a public health threat because we don't know what's out there," Bureau of Land Management Solid Waste manager Michael Moran said, agreeing with Harness' call for a quarantine.

The BLM has detected methane gas, sulfur hydroxide gas, exposed garbage and pits blackened with unknown chemicals just over the landfill's property line.

The BLM leased the land to Republic-Silver State Disposal Company in 1962 for a municipal landfill. The Clark County Health District and the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection are responsible for protecting the environmental and public health.

State and local government agencies have locked regulatory horns over the effectiveness of the landfill's cap since the BLM found cracks exposing wastes in 1996. One fissure ran for more than 100 feet across the top of the landfill.

"We won't be nasty about this, but this thing failed," Moran said after the site visit.

Silver State attorney Robert Groesbeck disputed the BLM's claim.

"Based on what we know so far, the landfill met the design criteria and did what it was supposed to do," Groesbeck said.

"Contrary to what the BLM might say, we think it held up pretty well," Groesbeck said. "It did what it was supposed to do."

Rain gauges at the site captured from 2.3 to 2.6 inches in 40 minutes, Groesbeck said. A lot of the junk and debris strewn along the channel may not belong to the landfill, he said. The channel ran 3 feet deep with floodwaters, he said.

The attorney said he explored the nearby mountains and found old railroad ties, drums and other garbage that was dumped illegally in the desert.

Silver State will collect all the rubbish that belongs in the landfill, Groesbeck said.

As for a Health District quarantine, Environmental Health Director Clare Schmutz said the agency is still investigating the flood aftermath.