Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

County denies expansion of gravel plant

Kevin Kenstler says he and his family are living next to a nightmare, a loud monster a thousand feet from his daughter's bedroom.

For hours after he puts his 7-year-old daughter to bed at night he says she lays in bed awake -- frightened by the rumbling sounds of the nearby gravel operations of the Rhodes Ranch developers.

"We are living in a hell with the noise," he told the County Commission Wednesday. "The ominous grinding goes late into the night. And the lights they have there shine a mile down the road."

Kenstler and several other neighbors of the planned 9,000-unit golf community in the southwest Las Vegas Valley came to protest Rhodes Ranch's request for a zoning change that would have allowed full-bore commercial gravel excavating and processing.

The board turned down the developer's request -- which in turn makes moot a use-permit application on tonight's Clark County Planning Commission agenda.

That doesn't, however, stop Rhodes' current gravel operation or force the developer to move to a less obtrusive spot. Under an 18-month permit approved in January, the company has been allowed to use the excess gravel from grading operations for construction on-site and at other Rhodes Homes projects in a 5-mile radius.

Homeowners are unhappy that Rhodes isn't living up to its agreement to conduct the gravel operations at the far north end of the property but they preferred that to a full-fledged excavation. They have sued to have the county's use permit overturned by a court order to stop gravel operations altogether.

Brad Booke, the attorney for about 60 homeowners and landowners suing the county, said Rhodes Homes has effectively been running a full-blown gravel operation. Booke's claim that the property has 14 million cubic yards of gravel worth $60-70 million went uncontested by Rhodes.

"The ink is barely dry and now we have a new application showing citizens were right, that Rhodes Ranch wants a full-scale gravel operation," he said. The suit alleges that county code doesn't allow Rhodes to export the gravel off-site.

Commissioner Erin Kenny advocated putting the design review on hold for 60 days, so the planning commission could approve the use permit, which would allow the commercial gravel operations. She voted to turn down the zone change -- but reasoned that the design review could have allowed the county to impose tighter restrictions and move the gravel operation away from the homes.

Commission Chairwoman Yvonne Atkinson Gates asked the homeowners what they would rather have. They chose the current situation over a gravel pit and concrete and asphalt batch plants.

"If we wait to allow it to be heard with a use permit, then what in essence we were saying was we were going to allow them to have a gravel pit for commercial use," Gates sad. "However, by turning down the design review, the County Commission killed the opportunity to rezone the area so commercial gravel operations could be undertaken."

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