Friday, April 1, 2005 | 11:01 a.m.
The first thing Linda Westover sees when she steps out her front door is the piles of waste left by illegal dumpers.
The enormous, 5-foot mounds of dirt and cracked concrete blocks sit in a 20-acre vacant lot across from her house on Pyle Avenue near Spencer Street and have remained there for at least two years.
Unscrupulous construction workers and others have slowly turned the lot into an illegal dumping ground, with hills of discarded dirt, rusted metal rods, massive piles of broken concrete slabs and even an old appliance littering the area.
"It's just unsightly," Westover said as she gazed over the uneven stacks of rubbish at the property southwest of Eastern Avenue and Interstate 215. "I would rather step out my door and see a school or a park."
The lot in front of Westover's house is far from an unusual sight. Each year, hundreds of construction contractors and residents in the Las Vegas Valley illegally throw away trash in private and public lands. While the household trash from individuals is ugly, it is the construction contractors that are doing the most dumping, officials said.
These piles of garbage and refuse harbor vermin and mosquitoes, lower property value and, in the end, attract more illegal dumping.
"We have a lot of people calling in to complain about finding construction materials and other garbage on their property," said Doug Joslin, environmental health manager for the Clark County Health District.
"You name it, we have found it."
In 2004, the county health department received 1,315 complaints of illegal dumping in the Las Vegas Valley, and 355 of those complaints were serious enough to merit further investigation and likely fines, he said. By comparison, the health department received 873 complaints in 2003.
The biggest offenders of illegal dumping in Clark County are "business entities," or construction contractors, said Joslin. Crooked pool-digging companies, landscapers and refuse haulers in particular are known as bad offenders, he said, and masses of discarded dirt sitting on empty lots is a common sight.
As the agency responsible for investigating illegal dumping in the county, the Health District fines first-time offenders between $500 and $5,000 a day, depending on the severity of the dumping.
There are six transfer stations and two regional landfills operated by Republic Services Inc., the local garbage company. It costs $8.50 per cubic yard of garbage (one truckload costs about $100) for businesses or contractors and is free for residents who already have trash collection services with Republic Services.
While most penalties for illegal dumping ranges in the $500 to $1,000 range, it can go past the $10,000 mark, as it did for David Brock. The Health District hearing officer found Brock guilty of dumping waste at 10749 Hunter Mountain Avenue in early March 2004, according to Health District records. The agency charged Brock a total of $12,500, according to the documents.
The Health District has assessed a total of more than $1.3 million in fines since it began cracking down on illegal dumpers in 2002, Joslin said, adding that the health department has collected $761,241 of the fines.
In 2004, the Health District collected $247,049 out of $511,374 in fines, he said.
The money collected from the fines is put back into the waste management program, he said, adding that most people who dump illegally are never found.
One of the most upsetting aspects of illegal dumping in Clark County is that the victim -- the homeowner, business or public entity that ultimately discovers the refuse on their property -- is responsible for cleaning it up, he said.
"If someone toilet papers your house on Halloween, who is responsible for cleaning it up?" Joslin asked, implying that the unfortunate reality of illegal dumping is that the victim pays for it.
In that respect, Westover is lucky. While the lot across from her home belongs to Clark County School District, a group of private contractors is planning to spend Saturday restoring the property. The group, the Associated General Contractors, Las Vegas Chapter, will bring in heavy equipment and operators and plans to remove more than 200 tons of debris.
"There is so much undeveloped land here that they (people) just pull up and dump," said Scott Smith, spokesman for the Associated General Contractors.
Others, however, are not as lucky as Westover and her community. The Bureau of Land Management is one of the major victims of illegal dumping, and it is solely responsible for clean-up efforts when the culprit is not found and brought to justice, said Hillerie Patton, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management in Las Vegas.
"People dump everywhere on BLM land," she said, adding that BLM officials have found a buffet of trash left illegally on BLM land, from huge piles of landscaping dirt to burnt out husks of abandoned vehicles.
Last year, the BLM spent about $150,000 to clean up illegally dumped material left in public lands, said Richard LiVreri, maintenance supervisor for the BLM in Las Vegas. More than 80 percent of land in Nevada is public land.
The clean-up costs are often so high because the clean-ups often require front-end loaders and other heavy equipment to pack and haul the material.
But private and public lands are not the only mark for illegal dumping. In some cases, construction contractors are also targeted by people looking to save $100 by leaving their refuse at an unofficial dumping site.
Mark Pack, president of Frehner Construction Company, said his company began a bridge construction project at U.S. 95 and Elkhorn about two months ago. The project was just getting started when the Frehner construction crew arrived at the site one morning and found a few truckloads of waste materials dumped at their site.
"To me it's despicable," Pack said. "It sucks for everyone. It's our community, let's take care of it."
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