Home builder latest to confront odor emanating from pig farm

Mathis Winkler

Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2002 | 9:54 a.m.

It's tough to escape the pigs in North Las Vegas.

On some days, when the wind blows just right, even people at City Hall get a whiff of hog, although the Las Vegas Valley's only pig farm sits more than five miles to the north.

The stench produced by R.C. Farms' 6,000 pigs is worse for nearby residents, some of whom live just a few hundred yards away and regularly complain to city officials about the odor.

Still, until recently an ample supply of vacant land made it possible for home builders to keep a respectful distance from the farm. But now the city's booming growth and the land's proximity to the future Las Vegas Beltway have one developer creeping right up to the smell border.

The proposal to build 389 homes just across the street from the farm at the corner of North Fifth Street and El Campo Grande Avenue puts city leaders in a difficult position.

On the one hand, landowners should have the right to develop their property, said Councilwoman Shari Buck, who represents the area that surrounds the farm. The farm itself is not part of the city and sits on unincorporated county land.

At the same time, developers will have to make sure that home buyers know they will live next to a pig farm, Buck said.

"I want (home buyers) to sign a paper, saying that they understand what they are getting into," Buck said.

The developers of the land would be willing to agree to such an "odor disclosure," their representative Robert Gronauer said.

An attorney with extensive development experience in North Las Vegas, Gronauer said the beltway and a proposed master-planned community on 1,900 acres at the northern end of town will only heat up the city's building activity.

Regardless of the pig farm, the area is "available to be developed and apparently there's a market," he said, adding that low house prices may convince first-time homebuyers to bear the smell.

City Council members were originally scheduled to discuss the development tonight, but are likely to continue the matter for a month, to allow developers to work out details.

Mayor Michael Montandon agreed that scarcity of land was starting to become an issue.

"Historically, those parcels that abut the pig farm were kind of taboo, and now they're selling for upwards of $80,000 an acre," he said. "I'd love to say that we're doing something wonderful (to attract the developers), but it's just a function of the fact that the valley is running out of land."

Montandon added that developments with about 3,000 homes are planned just a mile away from the farm.

The rising land prices and booming growth have not gone unnoticed by Robert Combs, who has run the pig farm for close to four decades.

The 62-year-old, lifelong farmer would stand to make about $9.5 million if he sold the land. He joked that he sometimes thinks about trading his cowboy hat for a developer's hat.

Combs has also said for years that he'd be willing to consider a proposal to relocate his operations. Since he feeds his pigs leftover food scraps from Strip casinos, however, moving farther away would increase transportation costs.

But apart from the fact that his farm helps to cut casino waste in half, giving up the work that has made the skin on his hands as rough as sandpaper is not something he's seriously considering, Combs said.

"We love agriculture," he said, standing on his farm, where peacocks roam freely and Caterpillars can be heard beeping on a nearby construction site. "We feel we serve a purpose producing food."

His sons agree.

"There's a lot of millionaires out there and not a lot of hog farmers in this town," said Hank Combs, 37, who works on the farm with his younger brother, Clint.

"We'd like to continue that lifestyle," Hank said.