Residents worried about dust from nearby mine

The fine black dust is part of Laird Sanders' life. It blows into his business, Lake Mead Boat Storage, leaving the rows of white bows with a soot-like coating. He wears a respirator when he cleans storage sheds to protect himself. His crews sweep and dust constantly in a losing battle for cleanliness.

Peter Silvia also fights the dust at his home in Calico Ridge, west of the boat yard. It blows into his house whenever a windstorm kicks up, mixed with the tan desert dust that many homes in developing areas accumulate.

The black dust blows in from the dormant Three Kids Mine, where for 44 years manganese was produced to make steel for bombers and bombs for use in World War I, World War II and the Korean War, long before environmental laws were written.

Until recently the dust has been merely a nuisance. But with a proposal to turn the mine's open pits into a gravel-producing operation, it has become a source of greater concern and a reason to go to battle for the two businesses and 1,000 homeowners living within a couple of miles of the site.

"There's always dust," Silvia said. "But if that gravel operation starts up, there's going to be a lot more of it."

Owners of the mine site want to dig and sell gravel for 20 years, then build a master-planned golf-course community once the gravel operation restores the site. The plan includes filling the vast pits by allowing trucks returning to the site to dump construction debris into them.

The black dust itself is not the only problem; what might be in the dust is also a source of concern. Preliminary tests have turned up traces of manganese, lead and arsenic, all heavy metals that pose hazards to human health.

Housing developers building Lake Las Vegas suspected as early as 1990 that there was contamination in the area's soil. The heavy metals they found in soil samples taken as they built the road to the upper-income community, however, were not moving into surrounding soils, so the discovery was not considered a health threat to future residents.

But as residential communities have grown up around the mine and encroached ever closer, officials with federal, state and local agencies have renewed their interest in the site.

And with the new proposal, those early nagging concerns about heavy metals have attracted scrutiny not only from neighbors but also from government officials, who are now focusing on the site as a possible health hazard.

The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection wants extensive tests done before the first shovel of dirt is turned on the 258-acre site. Preliminary laboratory soil samples collected by the gravel company's environmental consultant and released last week showed diesel-fuel contamination above state limits.

Hundreds of soil and water tests will be required to discover the extent of the contamination and the potential danger from the heavy metals and chemicals, according to Todd Croft, who is in charge of overseeing the mine for the state.

State officials worry that the contamination could seep into the ground water and eventually find its way into the Las Vegas Wash, just a couple of miles away. The wash funnels runoff water from throughout the valley into Lake Mead, Southern Nevada's major source of drinking water.

Earlier studies raised fears that fierce Southern Nevada winds or a flash flood could deposit heavy metals from the site into the wash.

But the proposed gravel operation raises a greater and more immediate danger in state and health district officials' minds: dust laced with diesel and heavy metals creating air pollution, according to Brenda Pohlmann of the Las Vegas NDEP branch.

Diesel-fuel pollution can cause lung irrigation and nervous-system problems such as shakes or, in a worst case, paralysis. Long-term exposure can cause symptoms ranging from dizziness to pneumonia. Heavy metals can affect lungs, blood and brain activity such as memory and learning.

But there's more than health at stake. The Las Vegas Valley is under a federal mandate to reduce air-pollution levels of both carbon monoxide from vehicle exhaust and dust from the area's construction boom.

If Las Vegas doesn't meet certain standards by 2003, the federal government could cut off funding for highways and halt all permits for treatment of waste water, stopping growth in the valley.

Until tests are done, the problem won't be clear. Possible solutions are even more of a blur.

No one is sure even of who is responsible for a cleanup if one is needed.

Three Kids Enterprises, owned by Paul Dino Bertuccini and David Gubler, bought the mine site in June 1989 under a federal law that allows a claim not being worked or kept up to be purchased cheaply from the government by a new owner. The previous owners of the land failed to renew their claim after the 1976 law was passed.

Three Kids left the mine dormant while it made plans for the current project, but it has kept up the federal paperwork, protecting the claim. It also receives lease payments from the Department of Defense in return for storing manganese tailings on the site. The site has an assessed value of more than $1 million.

If the federal or state government determines there is a hazard on the land, Three Kids would have to clean it up, but it has no responsibility to do so unless a hazard is scientifically documented. That process can take years.

Hollywood Gravel Co. has been contracted by Three Kids Enterprises to run the gravel operations and make the site suitable for future building.

It has been charged with doing extensive studies of the soils at the site to determine the dangers. If it finds hazards, it must report them to the state, but no cleanup would begin until the entire site has been thoroughly studied.

The Defense Department, which operated the Three Kids Mine from 1917 until 1961, is still responsible for 26,000 tons of manganese tailings at the mine. It plans to sell the tailings -- which could be used to make steel -- by the end of the year, Tara Jennings-May of the Defense Logistics Agency said.

Whoever buys those tailings would have responsibility for removing them and cleaning up after the operation.

But many more agencies have a stake in Three Kids Mine.

* Clark County, where the land is officially located, would have to issue permits for any activity, whether it's a gravel pit or a construction site for homes.

* The federal Bureau of Reclamation and Bureau of Land Management, which own neighboring land, want to be sure any work at Three Kids does not cause heavy metals to migrate to their land.

* The city of Henderson, where the homeowners live, wants to ensure the quality of life for its residents.

* The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service want to ensure that any endangered species on the property -- plants or animals -- are protected.

The Bureau of Reclamation and BLM have already done environmental surveys of the Three Kids property, which have shown no current public health risk.

Other environmental tests have also shown the current health risk is low.

In fact, with the exception of the diesel fuel, the contamination -- while violating federal environmental limits -- is naturally occurring, one scientist said.

UNLV chemistry professor Vernon Hodge guided several students in 1996 and 1998 through small studies of metals migrating from the mine. They found the metals occurred from natural volcanic and earthquake activity and concluded that the site, as it stood, posed no risk to public health.

Hollywood Gravel's own environmental consultant discovered the diesel-fuel contamination in evaporation ponds at the northern and western edges of the property.

Hollywood Gravel representative Dixie Jackson said the company plans to present a detailed testing program to the state by the end of this month.

Ninyo & Moore, a Las Vegas environmental consulting firm, has been hired to design the studies required by the state, Jackson said. The company has already done 30 tests at the site.

"We expected to find the diesel fuel" because it was used in the mining operations, she said. And they have found that the heavy metals -- manganese, lead and arsenic -- are not mobile, Jackson said.

Extensive tests will be done in the coming months to find out the extent of the contamination, senior environmental geologist Robert Troisi of Ninyo & Moore said, adding that it is too soon to talk about possible remedies.

Hollywood Gravel has not completed a traffic study required by the county, but it hopes to generate 96 truck trips a day into the site off Lake Mead Drive.

Hollywood Gravel, however, is concerned that off-road vehicles currently using the deserted site for thrill rides raise the dust that drifts into neighboring homes and businesses. To address that concern, the company plans to move its offices to the mine to secure the site if the county grants the permit, Jackson said.

"We are trying to be a good neighbor and enhance the site," Jackson said.

If the neighbors at Calico Ridge, Calico Cove and Lake Las Vegas have anything to say about it, though, that day may never come.

Thirty residents showed up Thursday night for a presentation by Hollywood Gravel at nearby Mahlon Brown Middle School intended to address residents' concerns.

What the company planned as a polite presentation of the Three Kids plan and an exchange of ideas turned into a shouting match, with County Commissioner Dario Herrera, who represents the area, in the lead.

"I ain't letting this happen in my district," he told a reporter after a spirited exchange with Hollywood Gravel representatives.

The County Commission put Hollywood Gravel's request for a use permit on hold after Herrera heard from residents who worried about the increased gravel-truck traffic and more air pollution.

The County Commission is scheduled to reconsider the permit at a May 5 hearing.

"We'd rather it be left alone, rather than stirring things up," Dennis McGarvey, vice president of Lake Las Vegas, said after listening to the gravel company's presentation.

Some nearby residents don't trust the scientists delving into the complex environmental issues at the site. They asked for independent studies.

"I don't have any confidence in the experts here tonight," said Bob Groesbeck, a Calico Ridge resident and former Henderson mayor who is a leading opponent. "They're hired guns."

Victoria Silvia, Peter Silvia's wife and a former industrial chemist, suggested that a federal cleanup may be in the site's future.

She noted that the Environmental Protection Agency is already moving in to remove contamination from the old Basic Management Industrial complex about 5 miles north on Lake Mead Drive and is reviewing environmental problems posed by perchlorate, a rocket-fuel booster, entering the Las Vegas Wash.

The EPA has never listed Three Kids Mine as a possible Superfund site, a listing that would generate federal and industrial funds for a cleanup.

The EPA, however, is aware of the problems and has communicated with the state environmental agency, an EPA spokeswoman said.

"Why isn't Hollywood Gravel being forced to clean it up before you start another business there?" Victoria Silvia asked.

Former Clark County Health District environmental supervisor Vic Skaar, now a consultant for Hollywood Gravel, replied that the only way to force the cleanup of the site is if it is found contaminated with hazardous materials.

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