County rethinks plan for clean air

Adrienne Packer and Launce Rake

Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2000 | 11:12 a.m.

When Clark County commissioners voted to withdraw a federally required air pollution plan Tuesday, they triggered an 18-month clock to resubmit a more thorough proposal to the Environmental Protection Agency.

If the clock expires without an EPA-approved plan to control fine airborne dust, the Las Vegas Valley will be slapped with serious sanctions that could stunt growth and threaten the county's economy.

The commission voted 6-0 to withdraw the plan despite protests from the Sierra Club, which has already filed an intent-to-sue notice against the EPA.

Agitated that planners have three times, most recently in 1997, submitted dust-control plans that the EPA has said won't pass muster, commissioners asked if the county could take a different approach to the plan.

"I don't like the process. I don't like this hit-or-miss approach," Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates said. "I think we need to take our best shot and submit what would be the most stringent plan and just live with that."

The fact the county has the strictest air quality regulations in the country carries little weight with the EPA because there is no overall plan to back up the regulations. Those rules, the backbone of the still-unfinished new dust-control plan, were passed earlier this year by the Clark County Health District.

Commissioners said the EPA is after a plan that not only addresses air pollution, but one that will stand up in court if the county is sued.

"The standard they (EPA officials) uphold our plan to is a very high legal standard," Comprehensive Planning Director John Schlegel said. "They want a plan that if submitted will stand any legal challenge."

Schlegel said he is confident the county can craft a report that will please the EPA within 18 months. If the plan fails, however, the county could lose its federal highway funding and the authority over Southern Nevada's air quality policies could be transferred to the EPA's San Francisco office.

"None of the sanctions are anything we want to see," Schlegel said.

Commissioner Myrna Williams said losing federal funding would only exacerbate the county's air quality woes.

"The wisest thing we can do is withdraw this unacceptable plan and get something else going," she said.

One group, however, did seek the sanctions. The Sierra Club, especially the local arm of the national environmental organization, filed an intent-to-sue notice with the EPA on Oct. 30. The move is intended to force the federal agency to formally declare the Clark County air plan unacceptable, and to start the sanction clock immediately.

The move by commissioners could shave six months or more off the start of possible sanctions.

But Jane Feldman, conservation committee co-chairman of the local Sierra Club group, said the sanctions are the only thing that will push the federal and regional governments to come up with a viable clean-air plan.

"We have waited for three years for the 1997 plan to be fixed, and we have waited for 20 months for the EPA to approve or disapprove it," Feldman said in comments submitted for the record. "Both the county and the EPA have adjusted, changed and fine-tuned this plan, many times, over and over. This plan is a flawed plan."

The new plan "is being handled in the same manner," Feldman said.

Following the commission vote to withdraw the 1997 plan, Feldman said she was "extremely disappointed."

"There is nothing that prevents them from withdrawing their new plan three years from now ... Get ready for sick air for another 22 years," she said.

An EPA official, however, said the complicated issue of timing clocks -- when and what sanctions would occur -- probably wasn't heavily affected by the withdrawal.

In anticipation of the Sierra Club lawsuit, the federal agency would likely have issued a formal notice of disapproval, Karina O'Connor, EPA environmental engineer, said.

With the withdrawal of the 1997 plan, the agency instead will issue a notice of nonsubmittal.

Both actions give the region about two years before loss of federal highway funds occur, O'Connor said. The difference is that with disapproval, the federal agency would have to complete and approve the air-quality plan before the threat of sanctions would be lifted.

That analysis period usually takes at least six months, O'Connor said. With a nonsubmittal clock running, all the county has to do to stop sanctions is submit a plan, which county officials have said should happen by June.