Henderson residents learn of plan to clean up pond soils

Wednesday, April 5, 2000 | 11:27 a.m.

For 10 years Susan Roe's son, Christopher, biked and played in the dirt on the edge of old chemical waste pits a stone's throw from his Henderson home.

On Oct. 12 Christopher, 16, died of leukemia.

"He told me, 'Mom, there's lakes over there,' " Susan Roe said Tuesday night at a hearing on cleaning up the property.

Her son described to her bright blue and green ponds and soils darkened with what scientists say is a chemical brew of metals such as lead and arsenic, toxins such as pesticides and traces of radioactivity.

Henderson residents learned at the meeting about plans for cleaning up at least 300 acres of the contaminated soils left by evaporation ponds from industrial dumping that began during World War II.

The rigorous cleaning process will allow children to eat the dirt around their new homes without harm, state officials said.

Doctors do not blame Christopher's leukemia on the toxic chemicals such as benzene discovered in the pond soils over the past decade, Susan Roe said. But Pittman area residents like Roe living east of Boulder Highway are worried about further exposure to their families if and when cleanup begins.

"It's devastating to lose a child," Roe said of her son, who played the viola and loved tortoises. "It makes me passionate to make sure the contamination doesn't spread during the cleanup."

Theresa George learned that the ponds were once treated to kill mosquitoes, but for the past three years her 6-year-old daughter, Kimi, has been bitten so severely around the eyes by the pests that school nurses wondered if she had been abused at home.

"She wants to move before summer comes," George, also a Pittman resident, said.

Henderson officials plan to annex the tainted land once six chemical companies spend $16 million to $21 million to remove the contaminated soils and bury them 2 1/2 miles away in a landfill north of the BMI industrial complex.

The new landfill would contain almost 2 million cubic yards of contaminated soils, enough to fill 75,000 dump trucks or cover a football field 1,200 feet deep, said Doug Zimmerman, chief of the Bureau of Corrective Actions in the state Environmental Protection Division.

The state and the companies reviewed five possible cleanup scenarios -- from taking no action to trucking the soils to a licensed landfill such as an industrial site at Apex, 15 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

The state prefers to bury the contaminated dirt in a double-lined and capped landfill at BMI that will be monitored continuously, Zimmerman said.

Once the pond sites are cleaned up, LandWell, the real estate arm of Basic Management Inc., which runs the BMI complex, plans to build a master-planned community on the 2,400-acre site.

Roe, George and others from the community near the old ponds east of Boulder Highway and north of Lake Mead Drive asked if Environmental Protection Division officials would live in the proposed Provenance development.

"I feel confident at the end of this process," Zimmerman said. "My answer would be yes, I would live out there."

Toxicologist Teri Copeland said she also would live in the new development with her children.

Once the soils are removed and contained in a monitored landfill, the state will turn its attention to ground water, which is under study for contamination, said Bob Kelso, the state's branch supervisor for remediation.

But at the end of the meeting Roe said she was not comforted by official reassurances or toxicologists' statements that one out of every four people could expect to contract cancer if they live long enough.

"What about the children?" Roe asked. "If one kid suffers like my kid did, it's not worth it."