Columnist Susan Snyder: Moapa Band takes on Nevada Power

Sunday, May 7, 2000 | 8:18 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

Residents say it's an ill wind that blows across the Moapa River Indian Reservation.

The Moapa Band of Paiutes' 71,954 acres sit less than a mile from the coal-fired Reid Gardner Plant operated by Nevada Power. The plant, tribal members say, isn't a good neighbor.

Residents say the smell and dust created by the process has fouled their skies for too long.

Dust clouds the sky on windy days and emissions create a strong stench like rotten eggs, bringing headaches, respiratory problems and nausea to residents, they say.

"Right now, the air is bad. The lower layer of the sky is all off-white with ash," said Rose Lee, an American Indian from a South Dakota tribe who is married to a member of the Moapa Paiutes.

Suffice to say they aren't keen on Nevada Power officials' hopes to buy 240 nearby acres from the Bureau of Land Management in order to add a new fly-ash dump.

Two new evaporation ponds for water tainted in the coal-firing process are needed, BLM records say. Power company officials want to build them atop the old fly-ash deposit. So they need a new place to dump fly-ash.

Fly-ash is collected by pollution equipment and trucked in a watery, slurry form to a dump. It hardens so fast, Nevada Power officials have said, that transporting more than a mile is impossible. It would harden like concrete in the truck. No other land is suitable.

According to an environmental assessment filed with the BLM, two evaporation ponds were due to close last month. The company needs to get cracking on new ones.

"Without a new ash disposal area, the generation plant will be unable to continue operating and will be shut down," the document says.

The document recommends the BLM approve the $228,000 sale because "no disproportionately high or adverse human health or environmental effects were identified" for the Moapa Indians.

Baloney, say Lee, the tribal council and 50 tribal members who signed a petition against the expansion.

In a December letter to the BLM, former tribal chairman Eugene Tom said residents have complained of "general ill health" for more than 15 years.

"We have headaches," Lee said. "We have children who have nosebleeds from birth. We call it 'The Ghetto' out here."

Tough choices. The Las Vegas Valley can't lose a power plant. And tests have shown the chemicals emitted fall within acceptable federal limits. How many headaches are acceptable? How many, if they're yours?

When President Ulysses S. Grant created the Moapa reservation in 1875 it had 2 million acres. It once dwindled to 1,000 "because of pressure from outside forces," BLM records say. Congress designated its present form in 1981.

BLM officials hope Nevada Power and the Moapa Band can find a compromise. The agency meets with power company officials later this month for an update, said Rex Wells, of the BLM's Las Vegas office.

If BLM officials must intervene, they will have to choose sides, Wells said. The power company or the Moapa Band will walk away the loser.

One of them, it seems, already has lost plenty.