Editorial: Wisdom required for a broader view

Sunday, Oct. 9, 2005 | 10:45 a.m.

Unrelated proposals that could affect the public's safety were laid at the feet of Clark County and Henderson officials last week.

Clark County commissioners are considering a businessman's request to rent Segway Human Transporters for use on sidewalks along the Las Vegas Strip. These two-wheeled, 85-pound machines are fun to ride but take some practice to control skillfully. Millions have been spent on the Strip's network of pedestrian overpasses to improve safety in a metropolitan area consistently named among the nation's most dangerous places to walk. Our pedestrians don't need another sidewalk hazard, especially along the heavily traveled tourist corridor.

Henderson officials are weighing a proposal to build a 73-acre shopping center that would place a Wal-Mart Supercenter and Sam's Club at the corner of an industrial site with a history of chemical spills. The shopping center would sit on the edge of Basic Management Inc. -- a site near the northwest corner of Lake Mead Parkway and Boulder Highway where four companies store hazardous chemicals.

Chemical leaks at the industrial area and an explosion nearby killed two people and injured 350 others during the late 1980s and early 1990s, prompting Clark County officials to create a safety buffer by restricting development in the area. Henderson has since annexed a portion of the BMI site, which now is where the proposed shopping center would be built, from Clark County.

Improved emergency oversight at BMI has resulted in few chemical spills recently. But the Wal-Mart and Sam's Club would sit only hundreds of feet from plants that use or manufacture chlorine, titanium, boron and other hazardous materials. It defies common sense to place a crowded shopping center next to plants manufacturing and storing toxic chemicals.

Officials in Henderson and Clark County undoubtedly can find reasons that these two proposals are legal and economically beneficial. But the fact that they can approve something, doesn't mean they should.