By Mark Waite

The year 2014 is still two years away, but Nye County Public Works Director Dave Fanning is already fearful about the expiration of a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to keep Pahrump in compliance with the Clean Air Act.

The chip sealing program, which has covered 285 miles of road since it began nine years ago, is a main driver toward ensuring Pahrump doesn’t get designated a non-attainment area for particulate matter. But Yucca Mountain money from Payment Equal to Taxes is no longer available and gas tax revenues are dropping, so the annual chip seal program may not even hit the road this year, he said.

Fanning suggested the Nye County Regional Transportation Commission ask county commissioners to put an advisory question on the ballot to raise money for the road fund. Voters overwhelming rejected a 2010 ballot question to raise the county gas tax from four cents per gallon to seven cents that would have increased funds for roads from $810,387 to $1.4 million.

Fanning said gas tax revenues have decreased $1.6 million in the past two and a half years, despite an increase in the number of gallons sold. Nye County service stations sold 1.96 million gallons of gas in October 2011, according to statistics presented to the RTC.

Fanning said unless county commissioners identify a funding source, there’s no funding to continue with chip sealing roads, to comply with the EPA memorandum. Non-attainment of clean air standards will mean Nye County will have to do its own enforcement, he said.

“Non-attainment will actually be like Las Vegas. You will actually enforce yourself and if you fall into non-attainment, there will be no commercial building within this valley because the state will shut you down. You will have only residential building, period,” Fanning said.

The Sept. 16, 2003 MOU said the EPA had the authority to publish notice of non-attainment status in the Pahrump Valley with the Clean Air Act but would defer action to allow the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection and Nye County Commission to implement a plan. The agreement expires Dec. 31, 2014.

Unpaved roads and clear-cut lots were identified as the source of 92 percent of the particulate matter in the Pahrump air in a 2011 survey. But RTC Chairman Cameron McRae felt there’s a lot of dust coming off public land like the dry lake bed, without any human disturbance.

Fanning said Pahrump had a bad wind storm last week that kicked up a lot of dust.

“It was nasty, coming in from the north end. A lot of it was actually blowing off past development that has actually gone into bankruptcy and has not been treated,” Fanning said.

Cleared lots have been treated with a chemical but that’s lapsed due to the economy, Fanning said. Off-road vehicles are being viewed as a prime contributor to dust in light of the fact there’s been almost no construction contributing to the dust, he said.

McRae took offense to Fanning’s comments the main intent of the chip seal program is to comply with the Clean Air Act, not roadway improvements to satisfy constituents that no longer want to drive on gravel roads. The expenditures of funds should be for the improvement of roadways, then by default, the improvement of air quality standards, he said.

“It’s crap. It’s crap the fact this MOU is centered around the chipping of roads as making attainment and being our silver bullet to go forward,” McRae said.

“To tie it to a stranglehold of a community for future development is absolutely ludicrous, particularly when there’s sufficient evidence that the development of the Pahrump Valley basin isn’t the prime contributor,” McRae said.

Fanning said he’s concerned about maintaining the current condition of roads that were chip sealed over the last nine years. Devoting funds to maintenance limits his ability to chip seal new roads, he said.

“We started something where the snake has finally turned around to bite us,” Fanning said.

Nye County Interim Community Development Director Darrell Lacy said Pahrump always had a lot of dust due to unpaved roads. The MOU was designed not to put Nye County under the thumb of the EPA, he said.

“Under the regulations there they could essentially shut down all development. They could mandate how much money we spend, whether we have it or not on these types of activities,” Lacy said.

An environmental group WildEarth Guardians, filed a petition claiming Pahrump along with 14 other areas should be listed as serious non-attainment areas with the Clean Air Act for exceeding levels of particulate matter. The others include Tucson, Ariz.; Alamosa, Pagosa Springs, Parachute, Durango, Grand Junction and Lamar in Colo.; part of Jefferson County, Mont.; Deming, Sunland Park, Chaparral and Las Cruces in New Mexico; Tulsa, Okla.; and part of Sweetwater County, Wyo. WildEarth Guardians wants the EPA to force those states to change their air pollution plans.

Lacy said that would be a travesty to Nye County since air quality has improved in Pahrump since the program was put in place. In the 2003 agreement the county committed to continue the chip seal program, regulate dust from unpaved parking lots, construction activities, open areas and vacant lots. The MOU was enacted after Pahrump exceed 24-hour ambient air quality standards for particulate matter 27 times in 2001, 2002 and 2003, since air monitors were installed in Jannuary 2001.

McRae said county commissioners made a bad decision not to challenge the MOU but said it’s not in the purview of the RTC, which includes county commissioners Lorinda Wichman and Dan Schinhofen.

Lacy suggested it would be in the county’s best interest to work with the EPA to modify the memorandum to allow Nye County a little more flexibility to deal with the financial constraints.

McRae said if the chip seal program goes away, other steps to help achieve attainment are still in place.

“The county in its other forms of regulations, when a developer creates something, they are required to mitigate the creation of fugitive dust in a variety of ways, which all make sense,” he said. “The benefits of the agreement go farther than just chip sealing roads.”

But Fanning added, “they’re holding us to that element of roads. They think if you have a road, people are going to use it. That’s where it’s coming from.”

Lacy wants to research other areas that have been given non-attainment status.

“They can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip if there’s no money here to meet their mitigation measures,” Wichman said.

Outside the Pahrump Valley, Commissioner Joni Eastley talked about the challenge of maintaining 2,730 miles of roads countywide, during the county commission meeting, the second highest miles of road in the state just behind Clark County.

Eastley urged residents to fill up in Nye County to generate county gas tax revenue. Gas taxes are the only source of funding for county roads, according to Fanning. However Fanning noted diesel fuel taxes don’t go to the counties at all.

Two crews work the entire northern part of the county blading roads, Fanning said. Eastley noted they travel to remote locations blading roads and doing maintenance in areas without even radio reception.

* DANDELION ROAD: In other matters, the reconstruction and widening of Dandelion Road between Highway 160 and Calvada Boulevard has been progressing slower than expected due to a change in engineers, Fanning told the RTC.

Nye County began advertising for bids Wednesday. It involves reconstructing 4,600 feet. A bid opening has been scheduled for Feb. 2.