Apex park air-quality rules could get tougher

Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2001 | 10:37 a.m.

Clark County Commissioners could impose stringent new pollution-control requirements on the Apex valley, including the Apex Industrial Park.

The rules would be similar to those already in place for the Las Vegas Valley, which are designed to control fine airborne dust from construction, vacant land, unpaved roads and parking lots. The commissioners, acting as the new Air Quality Management Board, agreed Tuesday to consider the rules Oct. 16 following a public hearing.

Those rules are among some of the strictest in the country, local officials say.

The new Air Quality Management agency has planned at least two workshops before the Oct. 16 commission meeting, Christine Robinson said. The workshops would bring together companies that would be affected by the new regulations and air quality staffers.

The Apex valley, about 15 miles northeast of Las Vegas, is home to a handful of mining operations and a power plant. But more power plants are planned for Apex, and investors in the industrial park hope to lure more companies to the 10,000-acre park.

Industrial park officials weren't immediately available for comment, but have said they fear the new rules could discourage companies from moving into the industrial park. The park was envisioned as a haven for heavy industry away from populated areas of Las Vegas.

The park was proposed after a 1988 explosion at a rocket-fuel factory in Henderson killed two people.

Catherine MacDougall, air quality assistant director, said the federal Clean Air Act is forcing the county to act.

The county has recorded dust levels over the federal health-based air standard four times in the past three years, she told the commissioners. The violations mean that the Environmental Protection Agency could apply sanctions, including a cutoff of federal highway funds, unless a dust-control plan is developed.

The rules for the Las Vegas Valley are part of a similar plan, now under EPA review. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman on Tuesday applauded efforts Clark County has made so far and said the federal government is a "long way from discussing penalties" in Southern Nevada.

However, said Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, who chairs the air quality board, Whitman did not budge on the need for controls in Apex during a meeting with him and Gov. Kenny Guinn as she visited Carson City.

Whitman, he said, "was sympathetic, but she said, of course, the laws are the laws and we have to enforce them."

MacDougall said local air quality staffers tried and failed to get the EPA to waive the clean-air standards for the Apex valley, which has no residents.

"We were not able to get a natural events exception for this area," she said.

Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates said she has met with the developers of the Apex Industrial Park, and they are under the misunderstanding that the dust rules could be short-lived.

Rules to control air pollution in "non-attainment" areas generally last for at least three years.

"I know for a fact that it is not a short process," Gates said. "There is some communication that needs to go on."

Commissioner Erin Kenny, vice chairwoman of the Air Quality Management Board, said news that the dust violations occurred was "a shock and disheartening."

Kenny, who has worked for years on various air-quality issues in the region on the County Commission and as a member of the Clark County District Board of Health, said she knew that the violations of the federal standards meant that rules would have to be put in place -- either locally or, failing that, by the EPA.

"It's very significant, because the whole idea of developing Apex was to take those type of companies that pollute and put them in a place by themselves," she said.

"Apex was developed for a reason," Woodbury said. 'Nobody lives there."

Kenny and Robinson said planners may rework the rules that eventually apply to the valley and industrial park to give breathing room to industry.

"I think there is going to be a way to work this thing out," Kenny said. "We're going to continue to work with the EPA to see if there are solutions."