New air quality agency inches closer to creation

Friday, Oct. 13, 2000 | 10:24 a.m.

The process for creating a new, regional air quality agency took a step forward Thursday with approval by the Regional Transportation Commission of an interim committee.

The Transition Management Committee, charged with designing the new agency, required approval by six local government agencies. The Regional Transportation Commission was the last to approve the committee.

The committee's task is potentially formidable. The new agency would merge air quality planning and enforcement, bringing together the functions and employees from several different regional government agencies.

The new agency would set and enforce limits on pollution from industrial sources and would play a major role in controlling pollution from cars and other sources.

The committee will look at the structure, funding and budget needs of a new air-pollution control agency. Philip Speight, Henderson city manager, said the committee will present the state Legislature with a plan to create the new regional agency in February.

"We need to get that up there as quickly as possible," Speight said.

The committee will report to yet another government entity, the Regional Planning Coalition. The coalition is made up of representatives of Clark County and the county's cities.

An audit of the existing regional air-quality bureaucracies provided impetus for the new agency. California-based Environ did the audit for a state legislative subcommittee earlier this year; Environ is scheduled to deliver the final version of the report to the subcommittee today.

The audit found administrative and technical shortcomings with the Clark County Health District's Air Quality Division, and said one reason for the problems is that planning functions for air quality are performed by the Clark County Planning Department but rule-writing and enforcement duties are within the Health District.

Merging the two functions in one agency could improve communication and performance, Environ said, although creating a new agency would not guarantee cleaner air.

The region is under a federal mandate to clean up fine dust and carbon monoxide air pollution.

The members of the Transition Management Committee include the managers of Clark County and the cities of Henderson, North Las Vegas and Las Vegas. The Health District's chief health officer and the Regional Transportation Commission general manager are also members.

The local Sierra Club group, which has been critical of the Health District's Air Quality Division, welcomed the move.

"This is a move in the right direction," Sierra Club organizer Jessica Hodge said. "We will be monitoring it closely to make sure that we're not in the same situation that we've had in the past, and not with the same players."

Hodge and others have charged that lack of adequate controls at the division has allowed some companies to discharge excessive amounts of pollution into the air.

"We'd like to see real commitment from this new agency to clean up the air in Las Vegas," she said.

Not everyone is pleased with the move. Clark County Commissioner Erin Kenny, also a Health District board member, favored creating the new agency by establishing a new board of elected representatives, who then would hire an executive director and consultant to map out the agency's structure.

"We have the ability to form the agency now and that agency can function perfectly well without legislation," Kenny said. "To abdicate our responsibilities to staff is not appropriate."

Kenny said she will try to again submit her vision of an elected board to govern the proposed new agency at a meeting of the Regional Planning Coalition in November.

Kenny and her allies and those who favor the Transition Management Committee can reconcile their differences, she said.

"We're absolutely unified on our desire to do something," Kenny said. "It is philosophical differences on how we're going to get there."