Saturday, July 09, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Developers blast plan to curb detonations

City responding to residents' complaints of noise, vibrations

If Henderson adopts new restrictions on construction blasting this month, developers warn that it could delay projects and add to the cost of some new houses -- all in an effort to solve a problem that doesn't really exist.

"It seems like you're hiring more police to enforce a law that isn't being broken," Paul Bykowski, vice president of land development for MacDonald Highlands, told city staff members during a meeting Wednesday.

Jack Bassett, vice president of land development for Pulte Homes, said: "What we're doing wasn't broke. You've got an expert who says so."

Since late last year, the city has received numerous complaints about blast noise and vibration from homeowners living near some of Henderson's newest developments. A few residents have blamed the blasting for cracks and other, mostly superficial, damage to their houses.

A consultant hired by the city concluded recently that such damage could not have been caused by blasts conducted within Henderson's standards for sound and vibration, which are among the most stringent in the state.

"We found no reason to believe that the existing regulations would promote cracking in homes," said consultant Catherine Aimone-Martin, who monitored blasts throughout Henderson as part of a three-month study.

The vibration and noise standards are unchanged in the proposed ordinance, which focuses instead on the emerging issue of blasting close to residences and other buildings.

If adopted as written, the ordinance would ban construction blasting within 100 feet of any building or utility line. It also would place new restrictions on "proximate blasting," which it defined as blasting between 100 and 300 feet from a building or utility line.

Henderson Deputy Fire Marshal Fulton Cochran said the new rules were needed to address a new problem created as the city has grown and begun to fill in on itself.

For example, he said, in one section of Henderson -- roughly the area between Black Mountain and Anthem -- residents can expect to hear about one blast per day for the next two to three years.

"No one in this town has had to deal with that ever," he said.

Referring to the ordinance, Cochran added: "What we've increased is the public notification/education portion of this. That's the biggest part."

But what the city calls education, developers call red tape.

"Our concern is that it is a nuisance-based ordinance rather than a damage-based ordinance. But we're in the construction business, and everything we do is a nuisance to the people around us," Bykowski said. "This is starting to tip the scales against developers, and what else can't we do?"

How residents feel about the issue is harder to gauge.

The city continues to receive sporadic complaints from people startled by blasts, but no one attended a public meeting on the new ordinance Wednesday night, despite several hundred notices sent out by the city.

A second public meeting, at Lake Las Vegas on Thursday, drew just three people, and a third meeting, scheduled for Thursday night, was canceled by the homeowners association at Sun City MacDonald Ranch.

But that doesn't mean residents don't care, Cochran said. He and other city officials still expect a healthy debate on blasting and on the new rules when the matter comes before the City Council on July 19.

"Based on the citizen outcry earlier, we would expect there to be a decent turnout," he said.

At that meeting, developers are expected to push for an amendment to the new ordinance that would allow blasting within 100 feet of a structure with the written permission of its owner.

Cochran said such a change made sense, though he said the ban on close-in blasting was written for a reason.

"The 100 feet is a recognition of the quality-of-life issues that have to be addressed when looking at the city as a whole," he said.

Bykowski said the alternative to blasting -- slow, jarring work with rock-breaking equipment such as hoe rams and headache balls -- presented "even more of a quality-of-life problem."

"People will put in a pool within a hundred feet of you, and they'll hoe ram for days," he said.

The proposed ordinance would also require contractors to submit a detailed blasting plan for all permit applications, proximate or not, with each plan subject to review and approval by the city's blasting consultant. To pay for the plan checks, $500 will be added to the cost of each blasting application.

Right now, Cochran said, what he most often gets from blasting companies are "aerial photographs, downloaded from the (Clark County) assessor's Web site, with some highlighter showing the blast area. That's not very good information."

The rule changes would not affect blasting permits already issued by the city, including those that would fall within the new definition for proximate blasting.

Assistant City Attorney Mark Zalaoras, who helped draft the ordinance, said the "upshot" of the new rules was to push developers to get all their blasting done in the early stages of their projects, before any structures go up and people move in.

That's a good idea in theory, Bykowski said, but it doesn't apply so well in practice.

"You can plan ahead, but you can't plan ahead to find a rock," he said. "You hit 'hard dig' in the middle of a project, and (these rules) could shut the job down for a month, a month and a half."

By contrast, local blasting companies seem almost resigned to heightened restrictions from the city.

During a meeting with city officials this week, one of the first things blasting company owner Dave Donner wanted to know was how long it would take him to get a permit under the city's new rules.

After the meeting, Donner, who owns Donner Drilling and Blasting, said he was reserving judgment on the new ordinance until he saw the final version.

As for the 100-foot rule and other restrictions on blasting close to buildings, Donner shrugged and said that was a problem for developers, not for blasting companies.

"When you stand there with that detonator in your hand 50 feet from a house, it's not a comfortable feeling," he said. "I'm in no hurry to be doing a lot of that kind of work, but I'll do it if the price is right."