Thursday, June 29, 2006 | 7:42 a.m.
The developer of Lake Las Vegas wants to store tens of thousands of pounds of high explosives, detonators and ammonium nitrate in a relatively remote corner of its Henderson community, unsettling residents already shaken by a June 5 blast mishap.
The temporary storage facility would be built in an undeveloped area of the upscale community, east of the Lake Las Vegas Parkway entrance road and north of Lake Mead Parkway.
The site is nestled in gently rolling hills, about 3,350 feet from the nearest homes.
The explosives storage facility would be an odd mix for the development of posh hotels and golf courses and whose residents include the likes of Celine Dion and Snoop Dogg.
The Henderson Planning Commission will consider the request tonight and the Henderson City Council is scheduled to decide the issue in July.
The city staff supports the request but may suggest that armed security guards be required to patrol the site at night and on the weekends when blasting is not occurring.
The explosives will be used by Donner Drilling & Blasting, a contractor hired by Lake Las Vegas to break rock and prepare lots for home construction. Blasting at Lake Las Vegas has been under way for months and is expected to continue for at least two more years.
Donner transports its explosives to Henderson daily from a storage facility 25 miles northeast of downtown Las Vegas. Company officials say they would rather have more convenient access to the material - up to 5,000 pounds of gel-like high explosives, 5,000 pounds of detonators and 50,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer used as an ingredient for one type of explosive. Another 18,000 pounds of the fertilizer would be stored on a truck.
Ammonium nitrate becomes explosive when mixed with fuel oil. For excavation work, the combination is poured into holes.
About 4,800 pounds of ammonium nitrate mixed with fuel oil packed in a rental truck exploded at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds more.
An ATF spokesman said the 5,000 pounds of gelatinous explosives were roughly equivalent to the explosives used at Oklahoma City.
The detonators are significantly less powerful.
The explosives would be stored inside three steel-plated storage structures surrounded by earthen berms. Donner plans to install cameras and use roving patrols at Lake Las Vegas for additional security.
Officials from Henderson, Donner, Lake Las Vegas and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives say the stored explosives will be safe.
"It's highly unlikely anything will happen," said Don York, the ATF's resident agent in charge of the Las Vegas office. "That's one reason why we store them (in separate structures) away from one another. And that's why we have the distance requirements. If anything does happen, everyone is a safe distance away."
Those reassurances don't comfort some Lake Las Vegas residents whose homes where shaken by a June 5 blast concussion that broke a window of one home and that of a nearby business. They worry about an accidental explosion and theft of explosives.
"It must be safer to put it in a remote location than such a close proximity to homes," said Joshua Abbey, whose home on Via Tiberius Way would be among the ones closest to the proposed storage site. "They can give all the reassurances they like to appease people's concerns, but nonetheless they can never give total reassurances."
Abbey and others said they are disappointed they weren't notified by either Lake Las Vegas or the city. Henderson sent out notices to property owners within 1,000 feet as required by state law, city officials said.
In its application with Henderson, Lake Las Vegas said an on-site storage facility was a safer alternative than transporting explosives almost daily along Lake Mead Parkway.
Henderson Deputy Fire Marshal Fulton Cochran and York of the ATF agreed.
York applauded the proposal to require armed security guards. "Our concern is always the possibility of explosives theft," he said. "You can never have enough security.
"In my career, I have had few people target (the storage facilities). Most of the time, they come across a metal box in the middle of nowhere and wonder what's inside and open it up to see."
Terrorists will be reluctant to target the explosives cache at Lake Las Vegas because they can make their own, York said. "Anytime they try to steal something, that puts them in jeopardy of being caught," York said. "They want to avoid that risk."
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