Sunday, May 22, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

2,200-ACRE PARCEL: Polluted site eyed for homes

Henderson reclamation project one of the largest under way in United States

It's an anomaly amid the flourishing urbanization around the old part of Henderson: 2,200 acres of vacant real estate that looks every bit as tempting as the poisoned apple that nearly did in Snow White.

She had a prince conveniently nearby to save her.

The 2,200-acre parcel, tainted by the residuals of magnesium production and industrial use, languished for decades before the LandWell Corporation assumed ownership in 1992 and began planning its redemption.

"We need to move on this at a good pace," said Mark Paris, president and chief executive officer of the LandWell Co., a division of Basic Management Inc. "It's really time to get started."

In size and scope, the proposed cleanup of the property northeast of Boulder Highway and Lake Mead Drive is one of the largest contaminated land reclamation projects under way in the United States. The land once was owned and used by Henderson-based chemical manufacturers that later formed Basic Management Inc. as a holding company for assets.

Tens of millions of dollars in private funding will be required to prepare the acreage for residential development. More than $50 million already has been invested in the effort, Paris said. Up to $40 million more will be spent before the site can be safely developed.

The LandWell project mirrors smaller efforts going on in growing communities around the nation that find themselves boxed in by the dwindling availability of large land parcels. In Clark County, that circumstance has transformed the Henderson property from white elephant to rare animal.

"Las Vegas is a hot market," said Charles Bartsch, a senior policy analyst for the Northeast-Midwest Institute, a Washington, D.C.- based group that specializes in economic development and the reuse of land.

"This is a situation where private market profit motives dovetail nicely with environmental cleanup efforts," Bartsch said.

Bartsch specializes in issues related to the redevelopment of brownfields, which are essentially industrial or commercial properties that have been contaminated.

A brownfield can be as small as the site of a former gas station or dry cleaning store, Bartsch said, or it can be as big as an abandoned military base or landfill. The largest brownfield projects may encompass hundreds of acres. Seldom do brownfield projects stretch out over thousands of acres.

"This one is mammoth," said Bartsch, who is also chairman of the policy board for the National Brownfields Association.

Ranajit Sahu, the project manager orchestrating the cleanup, said that the 2,200 acres in question never were used as a chemical manufacturing site. Instead, the land was designated as a site for wastewater ponds, which were in use from 1941 to 1976. Only about 400 acres saw active use as evaporation ponds, Sahu said, but the entire site is being treated as one big brownfield. In the interest of safety, Sahu said he would rather remove something that's clean than leave contaminants behind.

It's a position Paris shares.

"From our perspective, we're looking at the whole site as if it had been used," Paris said.

The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, or NDEP, is overseeing the cleanup effort to ensure compliance with federal and state standards. It's reviewing the company's proposed cleanup plan, which entails excavating the contaminated soil and trucking it to the private landfill on the BMI industrial complex. The contaminated material will be encased in a special lining, buried and monitored, Sahu said.

Roughly 4 to 16 feet of surface soil will have to be scraped away from the acreage. The estimated volume of the dirt to be removed is between 1.6 million and 2 million cubic yards. Once that's been done, Sahu said that another round of extensive testing, which will gauge the levels of more than 480 potential contaminants, will be performed at every site on which a home will be built.

"We don't want anyone to move to a site if they aren't very sure that it's a safe place to live," Sahu said.

Originally, Paris said that LandWell had planned to develop the site on its own. But last year, Centex Homes approached him about acquiring the site for a master-planned community. In November, LandWell agreed to sell the land to Centex for an undisclosed amount.

The Dallas-based home construction company has experience in building and selling homes on former brownfields. One project involved revitalizing an old hospital site in Santa Clara County, Calif. Another Centex site was a former Air Force station in Orange County, Calif.

Brad Burns, president of Centex's Las Vegas division, said the 2,200-acre parcel represents a substantial portion of the private land available for large developments in the Las Vegas Valley.

"As land is getting more and more scarce in the valley, (Centex) is looking for opportunities to expand our business," Burns said.

Centex won't be able to do any development until the cleanup occurs, which can't start until NDEP approves the plan, which is now under review. Sahu is expecting a response to the cleanup approval sometime this summer.

"I wish we could start tomorrow," Burns said.

The Centex development has not yet been named, but it will be a mixed-use community with a variety of residential dwellings, sites for schools, and designated green spaces and commercial use areas.

As to how LandWell and Centex will convince the public that the site will be a safe place to live, that effort is already under way.

Burns said that people need to understand that these kinds of projects are common all over the world: Golf courses are built on top of landfills, factories are turned into office towers, brownfields become sports stadiums.

And those who buy into the community that will go up on the former BMI lands will know what's under their feet because of the extensive testing that will have been done.

An EPA official said tax breaks are available to companies that redevelop brownfield projects.

Paris said that a repository of all information related to the project will be established and opened to the public. LandWell also has set up a community advisory committee made up of Henderson residents, environmentalists and business owners to monitor the cleanup process.

According to Bartsch, the companies are doing exactly what they need to do.

"That's the kind of stuff that's paid off in spades around the country," Bartsch said. "Involve people early and give them information. It's all about trust and perception."