Delay on dust rules threatens area road projects

Friday, April 21, 2000 | 3:02 a.m.

Hearing

The Clark County Health District Board will have a public hearing on the proposed dust-control rules on Thursday at 8 p.m.

The hearing will be in the District Health Center, 625 Shadow Lane, Las Vegas.

Staff has recommended that the health board receive public testimony Thursday and continue the meeting to receive more testimony May 25.

For information, call the health district at 385-1291.

The Clark County Health District will have a public hearing on draft dust-control rules next week, but don't expect those rules to be the final word on the gritty issue.

The proposed rules to control fugitive dust in the Las Vegas Valley have to be substantially revised, delaying adoption of the rules and endangering the region's efforts to receive federal road funding next year, local government officials said Thursday.

The dust rules are required by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The federal agency's approval for an "emissions budget," or amount of airborne dust, is needed before the Regional Transportation Commission can advance plans and funding requests for road projects next year.

Fine dust, known as PM10, is smaller than the diameter of a human hair and is considered a health hazard when inhaled. It mainly is produced by wind blowing across the desert, especially over areas disturbed by development.

The Clark County Health District Board was originally slated to approve the rules this month. But the sweeping character of the draft rules now on the table makes implementation impossible, agree county officials and construction industry representatives.

"I think we need significant revisions to avoid over-regulating," Russell Roberts, Clark County air quality planner, said.

He said the revisions could push the timeline for adopting the dust-control rules back by about 60 days. Substantial revisions also will require another set of public hearings, Roberts said.

Roberts said he still believes that the agencies struggling to draft a workable set of rules can produce an emissions budget that the EPA will accept by July or August.

EPA spokesman Dave Schmidt said he can't predict how long the federal agency will take to approve or deny the regional emissions budget or full dust-control plan.

That timeline is critically important to the Regional Transportation Commission, which needs missions budgets approved by January 2001 to get federal approval for road work of all kinds.

Jerry Duke, RTC principal planner, said his agency is watching, and worrying, as the schedule gets moved back. He said the EPA will need a minimum of 90 days -- and potentially more time -- to approve the emissions budget and the larger dust-control plan.

If the region doesn't have those approved elements in place, only projects already under construction can continue. New road work will stop, Duke said.

"We're all on needles and pins," he said. "It's out of our hands at this point."

The draft rules now on the table are based largely on the rules for Maricopa County, Ariz., and simply can't be immediately put into place, Roberts said.

According to health district and county government officials, several key areas that need revisions include:

Roberts said that perhaps the most difficult provisions are requirements that the work be completed within a few months. He said the rules should be phased in, with rules first targeting the worst dust sources.

Failure to do that will require a public regulatory program "larger than we probably can afford," Roberts said.

"You could write rules that say you have to do everything, everywhere in two years, but those rules are destined to fail," he said.

The revisions are not designed to give home builders or construction companies a break, he said.

"There's still going to have to be a tremendous amount of effort, a tremendous amount of investment," Roberts said.

Construction industry representatives agree that the rules as now constituted can't be followed.

"As they are written now, the regulations ... would not be workable," said Steve Holloway, executive vice president of the Associated General Contractors, a trade group representing Las Vegas area construction companies.

Treating disturbed vacant lands, both public and private, would cost an estimated $48 million, Holloway said. Those "outlandish" costs make both compliance and enforcement difficult to impossible, he said.

He said EPA-approved plans for other areas troubled by dust have less Draconian rules than the Maricopa County model -- "a lot less than Maricopa County, a lot more workable."

Additional industry concerns are that many of the rules and definitions are unclear or ambiguous or put government regulators in the position of micromanaging every construction project in the country.

But Holloway said the industry recognizes the importance of getting federally approved dust-control plans in place, and getting them soon. The rapid pace of growth in the county -- which adds an additional 6,000 people a month to the population -- demands transportation improvements.

"One of the things we need to be doing is improving our transportation system, both for safety and for the commuters," he said. The loss of federal highway funds alone would be a serious blow to development in the region, he said.

Naylor said a complicating factor for the local agencies juggling schedules while struggling to design a workable plan is the lack of feedback from the EPA.

EPA officials are still working to put the official stamp of "inadequacy" on old dust plans for the region from 1991, 1994 and 1997 rather than reviewing the new batch of dust-control proposals, Naylor said.

"It seems like an unfortunate use of federal resources," he added.

Schmidt, of the EPA in San Francisco, said his agency has a legal responsibility to go through a process of rejecting the older dust-control plans.

But the federal agency also is ready to work with local governments to help design a good plan, Schmidt said.

"We want to work with them," he said.

The draft rules will have already gone through months of drafts, workshops and input from various stakeholders, including the construction industry and federal, state and local government agencies.

The hearing on the draft rule, scheduled for the regular health board meeting April 27 at 8 a.m., won't be the last, Naylor said. He said a second round of hearings will probably be needed because of revisions.

County Commissioner Erin Kenny, a health board member and champion of the new rules, said news of the delay caught her by surprise.

"Everything humanly possible" should be done to get the rules in place, she said, and not just because of the looming road deadlines. Dust in the air is a health problem, Kenny said.

"The real goal here is not to make hardships, but to clean the air," she said. "I think we should use every available tool to expedite the adoption of these rules (but) we have to do it in a practical, reasonable fashion."

Launce Rake covers growth issues for the Sun. He can be reached at (702) 259-4127 or by e-mail at lrake@lasvegassun.com