Assessing the damage

Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2005 | 9:23 a.m.

Hoping to promote downtown revitalization, North Las Vegas is launching a study to determine the extent -- and cost -- of environmental cleanup needed to make hundreds of acres ready for redevelopment.

The study, to be funded by a $200,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, will assess sites that once housed service stations, auto repair shops and auto junk yards where hydrocarbons remain on the surface or in the ground. It also will examine properties contaminated with asbestos, lead-based paint and electrical transformers with PCBs.

The roughly 700 acres are in redevelopment zones bordered by Interstate 15 to the west, Owens Avenue to the south, Cheyenne Avenue to the north and Pecos Road to the east.

City-owned properties would be eligible for an additional $200,000 federal grant for cleanup, according to Steve Simanonok, an EPA brownfields coordinator for the EPA. Private-property owners, except for nonprofit organizations, are not eligible for the $72 million in grants that the federal government will award this year, he said.

Even though private-property owners cannot receive those grants, Simanonok said assessing land contamination that may be a public health threat and drawing up a cleanup plan will encourage developers to acquire sites for retail, office and other uses.

"It would be just a giant uncertainty on the balance sheets for developers," Simanonok said. "A developer is not going to buy into that uncertainty."

Simanonok called the federal funds seed money for developers because the grants will help identify contaminants and cleanup costs. That information then can be leveraged to obtain bank loans to acquire the property, he said.

"Now they will know what they are getting themselves into," Simanonok said. "A lot of times money is spent figuring out what is there, so the assessment can cost as much or more than the cleanup."

Some downtown sites remain vacant because of concerns over liability and the cost of any cleanup, city officials said.

"By identifying those contaminants, we take out those question marks," Larry Bender, North Las Vegas' redevelopment manager, said. "Sometimes people put off coming downtown and assembling land because of the concern over contaminants. We are going to make it easier to attract developers downtown."

After inventorying properties, North Las Vegas will create a priority list of the sites to be tested, with the ranking based on whether a cleanup plan would make the land more likely to be developed.

"We don't know what is out there," Bender said. "We don't have any specific sites and don't know what needs to be cleaned. That's why we are doing the assessment."

The study will cover two redevelopment areas. The downtown area comprises 238 acres of commercial, residential and light manufacturing properties -- land that, because so many buildings are in poor condition and because of the presence of light manufacturing, faces serious revitalization challenges, according to a city study.

The other area to be studied is the North Redevelopment Area, a 460-acre site that is part of the city's old core and which, excluding the central business district, contains most of the city's commercial uses, the study said. It includes most of the commercial properties along Las Vegas Boulevard North and Cheyenne Avenue.

That area has not grown like other areas of the city because of blight, which has created a stagnant market that discourages private investment in construction and rehabilitation, the report said.

When sites are selected for study, the evaluation may simply consist of drilling holes over a former gas station to determine whether tanks have leaked petroleum and drilling wells to monitor ground water.

None of the sites thought to contain hydrocarbons is a threat to ground water, city officials said. Some hydrocarbons are carcinogens, and may also emit vapors unless remedial actions are taken, Simanonok said.

In some cases, contaminated soil must be removed, while in others, hydrocarbons can be treated with microbes that degrade the pollutants, Simanonok said.

Brian Wargo can be reached at 259-4011 or at wargo@lasvegassun.com.