EPA lauds efforts on air quality

Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2001 | 11:03 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The federal government is a "long way from discussing penalties" against Clark County for failing to comply with the clean air standards, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency said today.

EPA Administrator Christie Whitman met over breakfast with Gov. Kenny Guinn, Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury and other officials to talk about the problems facing Southern Nevada.

Whitman said she was "very pleased" that Guinn named the Clark County Commission as the governing board over air quality in Southern Nevada. "The commitment is real. We see progress," she said.

"The governor is taking the kinds of initiatives that I think are going to be able to avoid any penalties," said Whitman, who was in Nevada to attend the Tahoe Summit. "I want to see in all the states progress. I want to see cleaner air.

"My interest is not to see how much we can get in penalties," she said, adding, however, that her duty is to enforce the Clean Air Act.

"But when we see states taking meaningful actions, then we want to work with them," she said.

Whitman noted progress cited by Clark County Air Quality Management Director Christine Robinson, who said the Las Vegas Valley has implemented what might be the most stringent dust regulations in the country.

Robinson said the county may impose the same regulations in the Apex area. Meanwhile county officials are compiling a strategy to deal with ozone.

Woodbury said after the meeting that Whitman's "attitude is one of flexibility, not to put a hammer over our heads."

"They want progress, not bureaucratic sanctions," he said.

The governor said that Whitman has pledged to get federal agencies to cooperate with local governments.

For example, in the middle of urban Las Vegas are tracts of vacant land belonging to the Bureau of Land Management or the Forest Service. When a windstorm hits, the dust from those lands contributes to the Southern Nevada air problem.

Whitman pledged to talk next week to her agency heads to determine how to solve the problem. Federal agencies, she said, need to "get their own acts together" to help alleviate the dust. The top environmental enforcer said she would "open up communications" with Nevada and Clark County officials.

"We offered them the opportunity to come in, so they can sit down with all our people in the air and water divisions to talk about what type of resources might be available and what kind of technical (help) we can provide," she said.