Gravel pit operation grinds on residents

Wednesday, May 8, 2002 | 11:02 a.m.

Karen Frehner lives in a small subdivision on the south side of the Las Vegas Valley, virtually indistinguishable from similar communities throughout the region.

Except for two things: Her home is adjacent to a gravel pit, and her neighborhood is coated with fine sand and dust.

Frehner lives on the south side of the Silverado Ranch area, and her house -- along with those of her neighbors -- is coated with the detritus of the constant gravel mining on a 15-acre site across from her back yard.

The grit makes small dunes at doorways and windows, tracks into the house, permeates the lawn and chokes the ventilation systems of home and car. The mining pit, surrounded by residential development either already in use or still going up, also uses explosives blasting, Frehner said, causing small cracks in her home's stucco exterior and foundation.

"It's a real drag," she said over the sound of the rock-crushing going on in the pit. "It's a 24-7 operation. You never get away from it."

Situations such as Frehner's have become more common in the Las Vegas Valley as suburban development spreads into the desert. Residents have lodged complaints not just about Impact Sand and Gravel, which operates the pit, but about most of the 75 gravel mining sites throughout Clark County. In many cases, the complaints come because people have moved near gravel pits that once were miles away from the nearest homes.

Impact's Cami Scolari, a community relations representative, said her company, which operates the pit near Frehner's home with at least two subcontractors, is operating within the law.

Frehner and neighbors, however, say the company is breaking dust rules. Frehner, who works for a construction company, said she knows the rules well, and that Impact does not follow them.

Among the allegations: Impact operates without adequate dust suppression, especially at night; mines during high winds; and sets off explosives without warning.

"We do comply with the dust permits, we are permitted and we fall within the parameters of what is allowed," Scolari said.

The Clark County Air Quality Management Department, which enforces the rules, has documented only one violation at the site -- a September 2000 citation for failing to comply with the permit conditions.

Bob Folle, an air quality enforcement officer, said his agency's staff has gone to the Impact pit numerous times to investigate complaints but has not found any active violations.

Frehner, who works for a construction company, said she knows why Impact is not cited. The company watches out for enforcement officers and waters down the area when they come, she said.

Folle said Frehner, who monitors radio communications in the pit, could be right. The practice is relatively common among some companies, he said.

Another alleged practice -- failing to suppress dust at night -- will come under closer scrutiny, Folle said. Air quality enforcers are now making regular nighttime and early morning inspections to crack down on scofflaws, he said.

Folle said the air quality department will step up monitoring of the Impact Sand and Gravel pit because of an upswing in complaints.

Another company, Rinker Materials, operates one of the oldest pits in the county, near Lone Mountain. Over the years complaints about dust, noise and Rinker's heavy trucks that haul rock have escalated.

Ray Brown, a Rinker spokesman, said his company tries to be a good neighbor, but any large operation will generate complaints and a few violations of dust rules.

His company has been cited on three occasions in the last two years.

"Rinker, which used to be CSR, when they opened it originally there was nothing out there," Brown said. "The county was the one that continued to approve uses that were not congruent.

"We try to lessen the impact on people, but it is what it is. Rinker didn't do anything wrong, the homeowners didn't do anything wrong, it is just that the two uses don't match."

Impact's Scolari said the problem is not a new one for gravel companies.

Scolari noted that the area surrounding the Impact pit is busy with housing construction.

"I think we get blamed for a lot of the construction fallout," she said. "We live in an area that is extremely dusty to begin with and there is construction all over the valley.

"(Impact's neighbors) did buy a house on the edge of a detention basin that is being constructed."

Rinker, which Brown said has more than 60 percent of the local rock market, is trying to still the complaints about its operation in the northwest valley. Brown said the company has been working with county government over the last 18 months to relocate.

Moving the operation will not be easy, he said, in part because the kind of rock mined for construction is not widely available. Brown said he could not give a date for moving the operation.

Moving the Impact Sand and Gravel operation might be even more difficult. Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury said the county would like to shut the operation down, but there is an ongoing legal debate over whether the county has the authority.

When the county granted the permit to mine five years ago, the idea was to empty out the hole and eventually use it as a detention basin to limit flooding downstream, Woodbury said.

The county intended that there would be a time limit on the operation when it granted the zoning variances allowing the mine, he said.

But although the land still bears a "public facility" zoning designation appropriate for a detention basin, Clark County Regional Flood Control District officials said last week that they have no connection to the pit.

And Woodbury said there is a dispute over what, if any, time limit the owners had to mine the pit.

"We've had staff working on it," Woodbury said Tuesday. "The gravel pit seems to go on forever, the extraction.

"There needs to be some time basis when it ends and the detention basin would get turned over to the county."

Although Impact Sand and Gravel is named in county documents as the operator of the mining pit, there are two owners: Cactus Sand and Gravel and the Canarelli Family Trust. Both companies share offices and executive officers with American West Homes, a developer that has built homes all around the gravel pit.

Some of the people who moved into American West Homes' Silverado subdivision have complained to the county about dust and noise from the gravel pit.

Lawrence Canarelli, president of the Canarelli Family Trust, Cactus Sand and Gravel and American West Homes, said last week that he was unaware of dust or noise complaints from the pit.

"We want to run the cleanest place possible," he said. He called the Impact managers "pretty moral guys."

Canarelli said he has been to the rock-crushing and mining operation and has not noticed "the noise factor that has been a complaint."

Impact Sand and Gravel, he said, is ultimately committed to buying the land it is mining now.

Canarelli, who noted that the gravel pit came to the area before homes sprang up around it, said the pit is important for flood control. Mining the pit is preparing the site for a detention basin in the future, he said.

"The one thing that was utmost in our minds was getting the basin built and doing it with private funds," he said. "It is good for the county, a good example of a private-public partnership."

But residents who live next door to the pit say the partnership is choking them with dust. Daniel Kobayashi, who lives a few doors down from Frehner, said he believed when he moved into his home a year ago that the mining work was scaling down.

And it did for a while, he said. But in February -- about two months after Impact Sand and Gravel registered as a Nevada corporation and 16 months after the company received a notice of violation from county air quality -- the five-day-a-week operation escalated to seven days. Instead of a 9-to-5 schedule, the mine began working all the time.

Problems with sand and dust and blasting also escalated, Kobayashi and his neighbors agreed. So far, attempts to resolve the problem through Woodbury, county air quality officials or the company have failed.

"They won't talk to us," Kobayashi said. "Everything was supposed to be done before all the people moved in. ... We were told it would be soccer fields, parks."

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