Ensign hopes to give McCarran security more time

Benjamin Grove

Thursday, Sept. 5, 2002 | 9:46 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., is trying a new strategy to give McCarran International Airport a few extra months to put new security measures in place.

By law, the nation's 429 passenger airports by Dec. 31 are supposed to have new screening procedures along with bulky, expensive new equipment in place designed to screen every bag.

But 20 to 40 of the nation's airports, mostly larger ones such as McCarran, will have difficulty meeting that deadline, Ensign said. Passengers could face lengthy delays as officials pick over luggage with the aid of only a few of the new high-tech machines.

More airport hassles could hurt the tourist-driven Las Vegas economy where passenger counts are still down since Sept. 11, Ensign has said.

So Ensign in July introduced legislation that would allow airports to work out more reasonable deadlines with the Transportation Security Administration.

Now Ensign said he will encourage his colleagues in Congress to simply attach the airport legislation to the high-profile bill under debate that would create a new Homeland Security Department.

Ensign seeks Bush administration support, and met Wednesday for 30 minutes with Adm. James Loy, head of the Transportation Security Administration. Loy approved of Ensign's plan as long as airports use "stopgap" measures, such as more bomb-sniffing dogs, in the interim to make sure airports meet strict new guidelines, Ensign said.

"We don't want all these other airports being advertised as safe and have these others not be, and have them become a target," Ensign said. "McCarran just won't have the big machines yet, because they don't have anywhere to plug them in."

McCarran has six of the "explosive detection systems," which screen less than 10 percent of passengers' bags, Clark County deputy director of aviation Rosemary Vassiliadis said. Under current law, passengers could face delays as the airport is forced to use a combination of those machines and probing security workers, plus three dogs, to check 100 percent of the luggage, she said.

The machines take between 90 seconds and six minutes per bag, she said.

"That's a significant impact to us," Vassiliadis said.

McCarran plans to reconfigure the baggage belts behind ticket counters so that checked luggage goes "behind the wall" and into the detection machines, she said. Construction has not begun and it will take several months beyond Dec. 31, she said.

"It would be a major construction project," she said.