As Las Vegas Grows, ‘Sin City’ Looks More Like ‘Smog City’

Any given day, the view across this desert valley--the fastest growing metropolitan area in the nation--shows a carpet of homes stretching to the foothills, sprawling beneath not blue skies but a yellowish-tan haze.

Distracted by the demands of an expanding population--new roads, new water lines and new schools--government officials here have failed to keep up with one of the most toxic side effects of growth: air pollution. As a result, Las Vegas--which outsiders may associate with images of sparkling neon piercing a crisp desert sky--today has some of the worst air quality in the Western United States.

A decade of unfettered growth, with scant attention paid to air pollution, has created a public health and bureaucratic mess that may take years to reverse, experts say.

“Our elected officials don’t take this seriously, and the air quality officials have been either inept or corrupt or both,” said Peggy Pierce, a leader of the Southern Nevada Sierra Club. “I’d prefer the nickname of ‘Sin City’ to ‘Smog City,’ but that’s what we’ve become.”

Confronted with mounting criticism, the head of the local air quality agency resigned in August, leaving his replacement hobbled with low staff morale and government reports condemning officials for lax enforcement of clean air laws.

New Director Christine Robinson, 32, has launched several tough new clean air initiatives. Her marching orders are clear: Bring order to the anti-smog program serving Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County.

“It’s been obvious to everyone we need to take our air quality problems more seriously,” she said.

But the effort is so belated that air quality improvements, federally mandated for more than a decade, are still years away. Despite three attempts during the 1990s, local officials have yet to produce a strategy to clean up dust and soot that is deemed credible by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and are expected to miss this year’s federal deadline to clean up hazy skies.

Geography and Climate Conspire

Las Vegas sits on the edge of the Mojave Desert in a 500-square-mile valley ringed by the ridges of the Southwest’s Great Basin. Summers are hot and dry, winds roar in spring and winters are cold and stagnant. Mix in 1.4 million people and it’s a recipe for dirty air.

The biggest mess is caused by wind-blown dust. It’s a major component of so-called particulate pollution, which has been linked in several studies to respiratory diseases, including lung cancer, bronchitis and premature death.

Some of the dust is of natural origin. Though desert topsoil usually develops a wind-resistant crust, as much as 31,000 tons of dust comes from the open desert, in part because off-road vehicles break the natural surface seal.

But a bigger contributor is the feverish pace of construction, which spews an estimated 53,000 tons of microscopic grit into the air over Las Vegas annually.

Exasperated EPA officials have moved to take control of Clark County’s air program--as the agency did in the Phoenix area in 1998, after years of foot-dragging by officials there.

Last month the EPA started a countdown that could lead to sanctions against Clark County, beginning next year. The region stands to lose millions of dollars in highway funds and may face growth restrictions.

“It’s a terrible mess,” said David P. Howekamp, who managed EPA’s air programs in the Southwest for 18 years until recently. “Las Vegas is a wild place. . . . It is local politics at its worst.”

The situation isn’t lost on the state Legislature, which commissioned independent analysts to assess Clark County’s smog-control program.

“The county has been dragging its feet something terrible,” said state Sen. Dina Titus (D-Las Vegas), a longtime critic of the region’s pell-mell growth. “The County Commission is very tied to developers and growth, and hasn’t wanted to crack down, and that’s what’s gotten us to this stage.”

In September, consultants to the state concluded that the county’s anti-smog program is understaffed and underfunded, poorly enforced, and disorganized and lacks a clear idea about how much pollution is emitted and exactly where it all comes from--the very foundation of effective clean air efforts in California and other Western cities.

Just one inspector in the Clark County Health District has been assigned to police 1,000 manufacturers and other businesses under permit, according to the state-sponsored audit by Environ International Corp.

EPA audits in 1992 and 1996 found that local regulators allow some new polluters to escape stringent controls required by the federal Clean Air Act, either by writing unenforceable guidelines or by not requiring the best available emission control devices.

EPA Begins to Punish Polluters

EPA officials say they’ve been slow to respond to the situation in Las Vegas because they were preoccupied with more pressing air pollution problems in California and Arizona.

However, the agency has begun enforcing anti-smog regulations that Clark County officials do not. The EPA has issued 17 violation notices to Las Vegas polluters in the last few years and so far has assessed $1.2 million in fines, and is studying further penalties.

One such action was taken in September against CalNev Pipeline Co., which imports jet fuel, diesel fuel and gasoline from Southern California. The company boosted its fuel handling capacity a few years ago to 23 million barrels per year, resulting in an extra 100 tons of smog-forming fumes.

The EPA charged that local air quality officials ignored their own regulations by approving the CalNev expansion without first requiring permits or the best possible emission controls. A onetime consultant for CalNev, Mike Sword, was subsequently hired by the county’s air quality agency and promoted to be its acting director while the U.S. Justice Department was pursuing negotiated penalties against CalNev.

Allegations of conflicts of interest have dogged the county’s smog program.

Michael Naylor, who led Clark County’s air program for 20 years, quit after the district attorney’s office found he had exempted a major printing company, to which he had family ties, from purchasing $60,000 in pollution credits. Investigators concluded that Naylor’s conduct “may have been inappropriate” but said they could not demonstrate criminal intent.

And the county Health District’s legal counsel, Ian Ross, resigned last summer amid controversy surrounding his financial interest in building projects subject to air pollution regulations. Ross’s job was to advise the district about air pollution laws.

Elected officials say they’re ready to address a problem that in the past, they concede, has been shrugged off. Particulate pollution “was an issue, frankly, that was never regarded as a serious problem before,” said Bruce Woodbury, chairman of the Clark County Board of Commissioners. “We live in a desert. When the wind blows, you’re going to get dust. Now the EPA has made a health issue of it, and probably rightfully so.”

Coping With Expected Growth

Cleaning up won’t get any easier, either, what with Clark County projected to grow by nearly another million people in 25 years. Meanwhile, the EPA is tolerating less pollution in American cities, having recently issued tough new limits for ozone and microscopic particles that are sure to require more aggressive controls for Las Vegas.

Robinson, the county’s new anti-smog chief, is calling for new dust control measures, restrictions on unpaved roads and increased emissions fees to pay for 15 new pollution inspectors. The county also plans to merge its two clean-air agencies into one smog-fighting unit. And Las Vegas could come into compliance for carbon monoxide by year’s end, because of cleaner-running cars.

For other solutions, many here look to the federal government’s Bureau of Land Management, which owns 54,000 acres of undeveloped, dust-prone valley land.

The BLM hopes to sell half of its valley holdings--27,000 acres--in a series of land auctions. The strategy will eliminate some long-term desert dust--but create short-term construction pollution as developers move in.

Business leaders embrace the notion of clean air--to a point.

“I’m sure people would love to see pristine skies, but we have to reach a happy medium between that and development,” said A. Somer Hollingsworth, president of the Nevada Development Authority, a Las Vegas-based consortium of local businesses that markets commercial and industrial growth. “There are two sides to ‘quality of life.’ One is air, traffic and water--the green side. But if you can’t make a living, the town will die. That’s the financial side to quality of life.”

Dr. Otto Ravenholt, who headed the Health District for 35 years before retiring in 1998, said his office neglected the haze problem during his tenure and clearly should have done more as the community outgrew its smog control program.

“This isn’t a battle that you win and go home, like the Gulf War,” Ravenholt said. “The public has to realize that the more people and activities you pack into the valley, the more we’ll have to modify how things are done, so there are fewer emissions.”

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Tons of Dust

About 87,261 tons of particle pollution annually swirls in the air of Clark County, home of Las Vegas. The county was the fastest-growing metropolitan region in the nation during the 1990s.

Clark County particle pollution sources

Sources: Nevada state demographer, Environ International Corp.