State to offer proposal to clear contaminated soil

Jeffrey Libby

Tuesday, June 5, 2001 | 10:44 a.m.

About 2,400 acres of contaminated land in central Henderson could be cleaned up for private residential development according to a plan to be proposed Wednesday by the state Division of Environmental Protection.

In a public hearing before the Henderson City Council, Doug Zimmerman, director of the state's Bureau of Environmental Remediation, will detail an eight-month cleanup process that would remove 2 million cubic yards of contaminated soil from evaporation ponds on the east side of Boulder Highway just north of Lake Mead Drive.

The soil would be buried in a landfill just across Boulder Highway at the Basic Management Inc. heavy industrial park.

The contaminated soil would fill a 12-story building the length of a football field. But even so, Zimmerman says the planned 52-acre landfill would be visible south of Warm Springs Road as a mound of dirt no more than 25 feet high.

It is the agency's preferred alternative and would comply with the Environmental Protection Agency's most stringent regulations. Other options include fencing off the area, capping the soil or storing the contaminated soil in an on-site landfill. Those options would allow no development or less intensive development.

The state agency needs approval from the public and the City Council to proceed with the project.

LandWell Corp., the development arm of Basic Management Inc., plans to build an upscale master-planned community with 7,000 homes and a commercial center on the site. The developer had agreed to donate 300 acres to the city for a state college as part of the town center, but that deal was abandoned in March due to lingering environmental and timing issues.

The contaminated soil is the legacy of 45 years of chemical manufacturing that began with the federal government's production of magnesium in 1941 to build lighter, faster planes for World War II.

A succession of private manufacturers, including Basic Magnesium Inc., dumped pesticides, arsenic, lead, radioactive isotopes and other hazardous chemical byproducts in unprotected evaporation ponds until 1976. In that year, Congress enacted the first federal laws governing the disposal of hazardous wastes. Since that time, the ponds on the east side of Boulder Highway have for the most part remained inactive.

Basic Environmental Co., owned by BMI, has agreed to pay the estimated $16 million to $21 million required to clean up the site. Those costs include closing and cleaning up about 100 acres of active evaporation ponds used by Timet Corp. in the production of titanium.

The contaminated dirt would be transported west by conveyor belt underneath Boulder Highway beginning in July 2002.

But BMI does not want to pay an estimated $50 million to $60 million that Timet Corp. will need to build new "zero-discharge" ponds closer on the west side of Boulder Highway in the heavy industrial area, Robin Bain, director of environmental services for BMI, said.

BMI has requested that the city of Henderson extend its downtown redevelopment area to include the 2,400 acres of contaminated land and pay for the start-up costs of the new ponds. Developers and city officials have estimated that the master-planned community could raise $145 million in tax revenues over 30 years.

For that to happen, Henderson would have to annex the land, which is currently part of unincorporated Clark County.