New plan in works to help control dust

Thursday, Sept. 16, 1999 | 11:33 a.m.

Some of the Maricopa County rules for disturbed vacant land, which provide the starting point for rules for the Las Vegas Valley, include:

It's the grit that gets into our cars, our homes and our lungs, the windblown hazard that frequently chokes our view of the nearby mountains.

And now regional governments are preparing to wage war on the environmental problem. Federal and county officials, including officials from the Clark County Health District board, are working to draft a new plan to get rid of the dust -- a plan that could require expensive investments for landowners in the Las Vegas Valley.

The new plan is needed because the old plan, say Environmental Protection Agency officials, doesn't work. One of the primary reasons that the old plan, adopted in 1998, doesn't work is that the regional response didn't take into account "disturbed vacant land," said EPA environmental protection specialist Larry Biland.

Biland said that as long as the region lacks measures to control dust from vacant land, the federal government will disapprove any dust-control plan for the Las Vegas Valley. Disapproval potentially endangers federal funding for local programs, including road work, and could eventually trigger a federal takeover of regional air quality programs.

The lack of rules is despite a request from the Clark County Commission in December 1997 to draw up rules for the vacant properties, which include nearly all the empty lots in the urban area.

Erin Kenny, county commissioner and member of the district health board, said the delay in drafting rules for disturbed vacant land is due to concerns over the price tag for the regulations and for numerous studies on the impact of specific rules and the definition of the problem.

The construction and development community, which controls thousands of acres of vacant land in the valley, is leery of the regulations. When the disturbed vacant land rules were first proposed in 1997, the industry worked with the health board to adopt rules governing dust emissions -- but those rules did not address the issue of vacant land.

"There were a lot of issues," Irene Porter, executive director of the Southern Nevada Homebuilders Association, said. "There had to be a whole lot more work done."

The association has a committee looking at the proposed rules that will meet for the first time today, Porter said. She said after the committee meets, the association will have a better assessment of the rules.

Among the things that need to be defined, she said, is what can reasonably be done to control dust from disturbed vacant land. She pointed out that the rules for vacant land will affect a lot more people than just those in the construction industry.

"This impacts every property owner," she said. "It's not only going to be expensive for the development community. It can be extremely expensive to individual property owners and to government itself."

Kenny and Will Cates, a senior planner for the county, put the cost to local government at a very conservative $5 million to $7 million. Cates warned that those figures could grow significantly.

Cates said a very loose estimate of the amount of vacant land in the valley's urbanized area is 133,000 acres. Most of that, he said, belongs to the government, especially the federal Bureau of Land Management.

County officials said private landowners could expect to pay $850 to $1,000 an acre to stabilize properties of less than five acres.

Federal and local officials, as well as Porter with the homebuilders' association, agree that the task for controlling dust is daunting.

Dust can blow into the air from almost any empty property in the valley. The greatest amounts come off of land that has been graded prior to construction or to clear vegetation.

Even walking across the desert can break the crust of soil atop the desert, said Sierra Club organizer Deanna White. The Sierra Club, Citizen Alert and other environmental organizations are concerned about the effect that windblown dust and grit has on health and the environment.

All agree that the desert environment of the valley makes the dust problem especially acute. The EPA's six worst areas for nonattainment of dust regulations are all in the West, all in desert or very dry environments.

Arizona's Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, is one of those nonattainment areas. The rules that are now being considered for Clark County are based on those rules, although Cates said the complex requirements will be altered significantly to make them more understandable and to take into account unique aspects of the Las Vegas environment.

The county is holding workshops until Oct. 2 to get feedback on the proposed rules. The health district board will get the rules later in October, and rules probably will have formal public hearings in January. The rules could take effect in 2000 or early 2001, Cates said.

Some of the Maricopa County rules forbid motor-vehicle trespassing or parking and require fencing or berms to keep vehicles out; require gravel, vegetation or chemical or organic soil stabilizer to maintain a "visible crust" on the desert soil; and require owners of unpaved roadways or alley to use "one of the best available control measures" to limit dust. The same rules apply apply to unpaved parking lots.

Although the Maricopa County regulations apply to all lots above one-quarter acre, Cates said the proposed rules probably won't affect people's backyards.

"We certainly don't want to start issuing violations to people who have a backyard that's not landscaped yet," he said. But people with half-acre lots that aren't enclosed with block walls could feel the bite of the new rules, Cates added.

The county on Saturday began the first of four workshops to discuss the basics of the rules and to get feedback from the public on the rules.

"We're looking for ideas and possible solutions," Cates said. About 20 people attended the first meeting at the county's Government Center.

The concern is about more than the need to wash your car frequently. The dust in question is not ordinary sand but "particulate matter 10," dust so fine that it is smaller than the diameter of a human hair. The EPA has found that the finer the dust, the deeper it can go into people's lungs. PM10 can be a killer, especially for the elderly, the very young, and people with existing heart and respiratory problems.

The EPA says "tens of thousands" of people around the country die prematurely each year from exposure to airborne dust, but the agency doesn't have an estimate of what the health effect is for people in the valley.

Most of the valley's dust, more than 63 percent, comes from construction activity, the air pollution control division of the health district estimates. Disturbed vacant land and unpaved roads -- also likely to be regulated under the new rules -- contribute another 18 percent to the 73,000 tons of fine dust that blow through the valley. The rest mostly comes from cars, fires and other forms of burning fuel.

But during windy periods, the amount of PM10 dust coming from disturbed vacant land and unpaved roads rises significantly.

The air pollution control division estimates that during one recent 40-mph wind gust, 51 percent of the dust came from disturbed vacant land and unpaved roads, and another 42 percent came from active construction sites.

Disturbed vacant land rules aren't the only dust regulations that will affect people living in the valley. The county and health district also are looking to tighten up the existing rules for construction activity and to increase the fines for those that violate the rules.

Some of that tightening is already in place. Biland from the EPA gives high marks to some local programs, including an educational component of the air pollution rules for local developers.

Michael Naylor, air pollution control director for the health district, said his department has increased inspections and notice of violations for permit violations and failure to take "reasonable precautions to minimize dust emissions."

So far this year, the division has issued 102 notices of violations, compared to 74 at the same time last year.

Over the last year, the department has also added four field enforcement officers, for a total of 11, who comb the valley for violations and respond to citizens' complaints.

The number of field enforcement officers may keep growing.

"Stepped-up enforcement is certainly a real need, for us to go forward with this program," Cates said.

The penalties for existing, construction-related dust violations also could increase. Most first-time violations for failure to take "reasonable precautions to minimize dust emissions" bring a $2,000 penalty for construction companies, Naylor said. With health district board approval, that could rise to $3,000.

And failure to abide by permit conditions for construction now has no minimum fine. Naylor said the suggested new minimum fine would be $1,000 for a first-time violation. Companies pay higher fines after a first violation.

archive