Dust fine waived for mining firm

Friday, Jan. 26, 2001 | 11:24 a.m.

A six-figure fine for kicking up desert dust will be waived under a proposed settlement with a sand mining operator near Sloan.

Officials with the Clark County Health District's Air Quality Division said the fine would have been among the largest ever for a dust violation.

Division administrators said Thursday that the proposed settlement will still cost the company, Southern Nevada Liteweight, more than the $338,000 in proposed fines.

If the settlement is ratified by hearing officer Ernest Freggioro in March, the company will have to pave five miles of road to its mining operation about eight miles east of Sloan.

Greg Walsh, attorney representing Southern Nevada Liteweight at a hearing on the fines Thursday, said paving the road will cost a minimum of $750,000, and possibly more than $1 million.

The company was cited for kicking up dust while hauling minerals from the mine in June and failing to abide by an order to correct the problem. Dust is one of the most pervasive pollutants in the air over the Las Vegas Valley.

The company had threatened to fight the fines in court, an option that would have been expensive for the health district, said division attorney Stephen Minagil.

Litigation also "will not result in the road being paved," he said. Even if the district had won the court battle, under state law more than 80 percent of the penalty would have gone to the Clark County School District, not to clean up dust or other air pollution.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency considers fine dust to be a significant human health problem in the Las Vegas Valley, and the health district and other regional agencies are trying to control the dust that sometimes clouds the air here.

Under the settlement, "the dust emission will be solved once and for all, permanently," Minagil said.

The settlement gives Southern Nevada Liteweight three years to fully pave the road. Freggiaro accepted the outlines of the agreement, but ordered the division and the company to come back in March with a fleshed out plan and timeline for the paving effort.

The paving could be complicated because the land actually is owned by the federal Bureau of Land Management. Southern Nevada Liteweight will have to apply to the federal government for the right to pave the road.