Approval expected for transfer sites

Launce Rake and Mary Manning

Wednesday, Oct. 27, 1999 | 10:07 a.m.

After years of fighting, Republic Silver State Disposal Co. will likely receive final approval for two waste transfer stations Thursday morning.

Environmentalists and neighborhood groups, who had battled Republic Silver State at several points to block the stations from coming in, now appear resigned to them.

The Clark County Health District board will vote on the two transfer stations at its regular meeting Thursday morning. One station is in the small community of Sloan off Interstate 15 south of Las Vegas, and the other is in Henderson on Cape Horn Drive.

The items are on the board's consent agenda, which means that the stations can be approved along with other routine business unless a board member objects. Staff members and environmentalists who had battled the issue said the vote will almost certainly be to approve the stations, which the company says are necessary to keep trash-hauling costs down.

"No matter what is said now, it's going to happen," said Allie Smith, an activist with Citizen Alert, an environmental organization.

She said residents in Sloan, particularly in a mobile-home park near one of the proposed transfer stations, are unhappy with the result. But many of the park residents were elderly and couldn't make it to meetings where the issue was debated, Smith said.

"It's disappointing because these people don't want to see this happen in their back yard," Smith said.

Representatives from Republic Silver State did not immediately return phone calls. Over the past two years, company executives have expressed frustration as they selected succeeding sites for new transfer stations, only to be greeted with community resistance.

The first site the company found was near Flamingo Road and Buffalo Drive. Boisterous protesters helped drive the company to another site -- a 10-acre parcel near Blue Diamond Road.

Again, protesters -- among them celebrity comedian/magician Teller of Penn and Teller -- forced the company to pull its proposal.

Transfer stations allow the company to collect and consolidate trash before moving it in larger amounts to landfills, recycling facilities or other end points. Company executives have complained that people have confused their transfer stations with dumps, although the trash at transfer stations is within an enclosed building.

The company said that without new transfer stations, trash-hauling costs could go up for residents, businesses and other trash-generators.

Residents had argued unsuccessfully that transfer stations should be restricted to heavy industrial zoning areas. The Clark County Commission, however, voted in January to allow transfer stations in light industrial zones. Glenn Savage, in charge of the solid waste inspection program for the health district, said the two sites are the first to be permitted under a new rule approved by the Nevada Environmental Commission in April 1998.

The Clark County Planning Commission and the city of Henderson scheduled public hearings on the sites where public comment was recorded. Savage said residents near the Sloan and Henderson sites expressed their concerns.

The Cape Horn Drive site in Henderson is within an industrial zone and the Sloan location is isolated, Savage said. The county's Comprehensive Planning Division approved the Sloan site as did Henderson.

The item on the health district's board's consent agenda is for a construction permit, Savage said. Republic Silver State will still need grading and dust control permits from the district's Air Pollution Control Division.

The company also will need operating permits from the health district before the transfer stations can open.

"We're making them jump through some high hoops," Savage said.