Friday, Nov. 7, 2003 | 11:09 a.m.
Public forum
A public forum will be held on the plan at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 14 at the BLM Las Vegas Field Office.
Lone Mountain community residents are keeping a close eye on a proposed extension of a mining pit that would consume an additional 30 acres of public lands in the area.
Members of the Lone Mountain Advisory Council plan to meet Nov. 13 to talk about the possible expansion of Nevada Ready Mix's mine and decide whether to oppose it, Donna Tagliaferri, chairwoman of the Lone Mountain Citizens Advisory Council, said.
The next day, the Bureau of Land Management will hold a meeting to hear public comments about the application for the mineral sale.
The BLM meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. at the Las Vegas field office, 4701 N. Torrey Pines Drive. A project presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session and open forum.
The application raises issues of residential neighborhoods growing around industrial areas.
While children dig in sand boxes with plastic shovels at Lone Mountain Park, heavy machinery hacks away at the rock-hard earth just a few miles away.
A drive west of the park offers an eyeful of extravagant homes and a breathtaking view of the mountains. Going past those homes, however, results in an eyeful of dust from the mining pits that spread out in the desert where Lone Mountain Road dead-ends into the Las Vegas Beltway.
Neighbors haven't decided whether to fight the expansion, said Kim Bush, a town board member for Mountain Crest Neighborhood Services, but the relationship between the mines, which have operated there for decades, and residents has not been good.
"What I hear from the majority of residents is they don't like them, especially more recently," she said. "Basically the noise lately has been a problem for them. The pits are not something that people love."
Officials for Nevada Ready Mix, which produces a range of concrete products, say they want to use the public land to expand the current pit. They say the expansion will make the area look nicer in the long run and facilitate development when the mining is finished.
The company has asked to buy 450,000 tons of aggregate -- sand and gravel -- over a five-year period on the parcel adjacent to land that the company already mines.
In addition to wanting more material out of the mine, the company wants to get rid of high walls that have been created to keep the mine within its boundaries, Richard Thornton, executive vice president of Nevada Ready Mix, said. That would make the area look nicer and help natural vegetation grow after the mining is complete, he said.
"It is difficult for things to grow on a steep wall," Thornton said. "After the project is done, they will try to make something of that area. A flatter area will result in more natural vegetation reoccuring."
Nevada Ready Mix is looking at the long-term picture, Thornton said.
"We're trying not to ravage the whole area," he said. "Instead we want to make them into developable land in the future that will be pleasing to everyone."
The look of the area is a big issue to residents, Tagliaferri said.
"It's pretty ugly up there," she said. "People really hate the way they look."
But it's not the only issue, she and Bush said.
"They at one point had paintball issues and other issues where off-road vehicles were zooming through there," Bush said. "Air quality has been an issue as well."
Tagliaferri said that the biggest problem is the trucks.
"The trucks are very dangerous," she said. "It is a 24-hour operation so they go back and forth all day and night and they aren't safe."
But those concerns don't necessarily mean neighbors will oppose the project, they said.
While the pits are not welcome to the Lone Mountain community, residents still understand that they are necessary, Tagliaferri said.
"It's very mixed," she said. "I know they hate the pits and the trucks, but the town needs the gravel pits. It's like people hate them and know they need them at the same time."
Tagliaferri notes that the mine pits have been at the Lone Mountain location since the early 1980s.
"We made a decision that the pits did not bother us before we decided to move here," she said. "It's like people complain, but they knew the gravel pits were there before they moved here. They are complaining about things that have been there for years."
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