Monday, July 26, 2004 | 11:01 a.m.
A dormant Clark County cement plant that has a history as a major polluter is taking steps toward reopening, worrying environmental officials.
The Royal Cement plant in Logandale has battled with the regional Environmental Protection Agency office, the Clark County Air Quality Department and the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection for its entire decade of on-and-off operation, according to county, state and federal agency representatives.
On July 15, the plant's owner deposited $30,000 with the Bureau of Land Management to survey and appraise the 187 acres of public land on which Royal Cement is located, according to BLM files.
The owner, Aldo DiNardo, who lives in the Los Angeles area, said he hopes to restart operations soon, even while the BLM surveys the land for purchase. He cited a section of federal regulations that he claimed would allow him to do so.
But BLM officials said that section allowed him only to occupy the land. They said he could no longer mine limestone there, the chief ingredient in cement. They also said he lacked operating permits.
Interviewed recently in Las Vegas, DiNardo said he had sunk $12 million into the plant and hoped to recoup his investment. He blamed a series of mishaps and a bad manager for the plant's failure in the past.
But Steven Frey, an environmental engineer with the air division of the regional EPA, said Royal Cement had "probably never been completely in compliance" with environmental regulations.
Even by the standards of cement manufacturing, a relatively dirty industry, Royal Cement had always been "especially problematic," Frey said.
Any move toward resumption of the plant's operations, such as attempting to purchase the land, would be a "red flag" for environmental officials, Frey said. "It would create an urgency for us in terms of getting (the plant) into compliance," he said.
The plant, located in the Moapa Valley -- about 60 miles north of Las Vegas and 20 miles from the Arizona border, near the Valley of Fire State Park and a portion of Lake Mead -- has not operated since last August, when it ran out of money, DiNardo said.
Environmental officials said the problem with DiNardo's operation was inherent and intractable: His equipment was built in the 1950s, before the federal Clean Air Act of 1977 mandated cleaner factories.
DiNardo bought a junked cement plant, originally built in Iowa in 1954, for about $500,000, then spent another $500,000 trucking the parts to Nevada in 1985.
But since Clark County issued permits for Royal Cement as a new plant in 1985, the plant is subject to post-Clean Air Act pollution standards. Frey said those standards were probably impossible for a plant built in 1954 to meet, no matter how much it was modified.
DiNardo said he spent 10 years rebuilding the plant and bringing it up to date. He claimed its emissions levels were OK'd by the EPA in a recent inspection.
The EPA's Frey, however, said Royal Cement had repeatedly failed tests of its emissions. The plant was twice notified -- in 1997 and 1999 -- that its emissions violated federal standards. Those notices remain unresolved, Frey said.
DiNardo denied that his emissions were in violation, calling the matter "basically a record-keeping issue" and blaming his former general manager for ignoring EPA notices.
DiNardo also owes $70,000 in back emissions fees and late charges and $94,000 in penalties, Air Quality Department Compliance Manager Gary Miller said. He said DiNardo never submitted a final operating plan or installed emissions monitoring systems required by his permits.
Cement, a fine powder that is one of the raw materials used to make concrete, is made by heating pulverized limestone and other mineral additives to about 2,700 degrees. The limestone powder hardens into a substance called clinker, which is again pulverized, becoming cement.
The process burns coal, giving off the same pollutants as a coal-burning power plant. But most of cement plants' pollution comes from the powders escaping into the atmosphere as dust, said Robert Folle, acting assistant director for the county Air Quality Department.
"Because cement as a product is very, very fine, you have a lot of particulate emissions, especially if you don't do regular maintenance," he said.
"This was just a real dirty facility with a lot of leaks and cracks," Folle added. "They needed to update their monitoring and controls to obtain a federal permit."
Besides being antiquated -- several officials said it was unlike any cement plant they'd seen, and one described it as "Third World" -- Royal Cement is smaller than the average cement plant. It has a capacity of 200,000 tons per year, but in the five or so total years of its operation, it has produced about 450,000 tons in all, DiNardo said.
The industry average is 800,000 to 1 million tons, said Rich Warren, executive director of the Southern Nevada Concrete and Aggregates Association.
DiNardo argues that Las Vegas needs whatever concrete he can manufacture. In recent months, a cement supply shortage has put a damper on the Las Vegas Valley's booming building industry and pushed the price of cement up from $60 per ton last year to as much as $95 per ton today, DiNardo noted.
To relieve the crunch, last week a Kansas-based company announced plans for a $250 million plant on a Clark County American Indian reservation that would produce 1.5 million tons of cement per year, but that plant isn't expected to be operational for five years.
DiNardo said that with cement prices so high, he believes he can recoup his $12 million investment and make a profit in the five years before the new plant opens.
Processing the 187 acres for possible sale to DiNardo is expected to take at least a year. BLM officials said environmental issues would not impede the potential sale, as DiNardo would be responsible for contamination of the land whether or not he purchased it.
Last year, BLM discovered that the plant was essentially occupying public lands illegally, as DiNardo failed to pay fees of $1,300 to maintain his mining claims to the area in 2002. The voiding of the claims was never appealed, and DiNardo's plan of operations was revoked last July.
That was a relief to environment officials, whose years of attempting to bring the plant up to code had resulted only in piles of paperwork.
"We never want to put anyone out of business," Folle said. "However, when you have a facility that can't or won't come into compliance, it's a matter of public health. We gave them every chance, every opportunity to meet the air quality standards."
But the plant's environmental troubles do not affect whether DiNardo can buy the land, said Anna Wharton, BLM supervisory realty specialist. "From a realty standpoint, we can sell to him by direct sale if we choose to," she said.
The site "does have other issues, but it wouldn't preclude us from selling the property to him," she said, although she acknowledged that purchasing the site "does aid him somewhat by not having to remediate the BLM issues that are out there."
If BLM did not sell the property, it would require DiNardo to tear down all the structures on the site, clean up all the environmental damage and plant vegetation to return the site to its natural desert state, Wharton said.
She noted that DiNardo would still have those responsibilities if he bought the land, but he we would have to answer to the EPA and the state and county agencies it works through instead of the BLM. The BLM, the erstwhile landlord, would simply be eliminated as middleman.
The EPA relies on court orders and settlements for enforcement, Frey said.
DiNardo said he was committed to fulfilling environmental requirements and confident he could do so quickly. "They never shut me down," he pointed out. "I shut down because I ran out of money."
archive
