Builders may lose ability to earn pollution ‘credits’

Monday, Dec. 3, 2001 | 9:34 a.m.

The controversial trading of local "credits" that allow developers to create air pollution in exchange for cleaning up dust pollution at other sites may soon be over.

The Clark County Commission, acting as the regional Air Quality Board, on Tuesday will consider a proposal to phase out the Emissions Reduction Credit Program. It will begin with ending the ability of companies to earn new dust-control credits and trade them for other kinds of pollution.

The emissions program was designed to encourage companies to pave roads and reduce thousands of tons of fine dust, known as particulate matter 10 or PM10. The companies would gain pollution credits, which gave the right to produce pollution elsewhere.

The program was designed to reduce pollution on a two-to-one basis -- that is, credits for removing two tons of dust could be applied to allow a ton of air pollution at another site.

Over two decades the complex program has raised strong objections from environmentalists. The activists have said the program's gains have been difficult or impossible to track. They also criticized the "interpollutant" trading, which allowed reductions in dust to be used to produce carbon monoxide or other pollution.

Despite the criticism, the program has accomplished some goals, Catherine MacDougall, Clark County Air Quality assistant director, said.

"We truly believe that regardless of the flaws in the past program, the fact is that we did pave hundreds of miles of roads in the Las Vegas Valley," MacDougall said.

Dirt roads are one of the principal sources of the fine dust, which is considered by federal agencies to be a human health problem. Southern Nevada is under a federal mandate to clean up the high levels of airborne dust and other pollutants in the region.

Because of law changes to comply with the federal mandate, roads that once were paved through the emissions program now must be paved by developers or property owners, making the focus of the program largely obsolete.

Financially, the biggest beneficiaries of the program have been the county -- which paves new roads as a government service -- and Las Vegas Paving, which aggressively paved roads throughout the valley to accrue millions of dollars worth of credits, according to county staff.

"The roads will get paved either way," Dave Breault, environmental manager for Las Vegas Paving, said. "The only thing that will be different is who is going to pay for it."

Before, the company would pave roads at its own expense, recovering the money by selling the emissions credits. For many residents desperate to escape swirls of dust from unpaved roads near their homes, the program was a godsend, Breault said.

He said that the complexity of the program encouraged criticism, which wasn't always fair.

"It's been a controversial program," he said. "I don't have any objections to the program ending, but a lot of people didn't know the whole picture."

Peggy Pierce, conservation committee co-chairwoman of the local Sierra Club, said environmentalists were concerned that trading dust credits for other kinds of pollution wasn't a scientifically based equation.

She said the complexity of the often-amended program also made the gains of the program difficult to account for, even for the air quality agency staffers and the companies that accrued the credits.

MacDougall said companies including Las Vegas Paving that still have credits will not lose them if, as expected, county commissioners vote to phase out the emissions program.

Companies will have until 2006 to trade or sell the credits, she said. But the companies would not be able to accrue more credits.