You will hear today from my colleagues in local government about all we are doing to meet the challenges of providing a high quality of life in the fastest growing community in America. Others will talk about land use, community planning, water, transportation, etc. I want to focus chiefly on that which is fundamental to us all, the quality of the air we breathe. We have struggled with two pollutants for many years - carbon monoxide and inhaleable particulates (or PM10). We are confident, however, that our local efforts will ultimately result in air quality that meets all of the nationally established standards.
In recognizing that we need to do more in this area, I would also like to state that through a combination of our local efforts and partnerships with our Federal and State counterparts, we have made substantial progress in improving our air quality despite the effects of explosive growth. I would like to touch on just a couple of representative examples.
In the recent past, I have been involved with two locally created, consensus based efforts to define for ourselves the sources of our air quality problems and the best methods of addressing them. Our Clean Air Task Forces I and II came up with a Clean Air Action Plan with over 140 recommendations, most of which have been implemented. As you can see from Chart 1, the recommendations included, as examples, more stringent controls on automobiles and diesel trucks, use of cleaner fuels, aggressive regulation of construction sites, better enforcement of regulations pertaining to industrial sources, fireplace controls, and car pooling, mass transit improvements and locally funded regional transportation facilities. Currently we are looking at additional major improvements in mass transit and a public/private partnership to build a fixed guide way system. We all know that traffic jams and pollution go together. RTC and the NDOT have been working together to fund significant expansions of important roadways and highways including the improvements to the Spaghetti Bowl and the widening of I-95, and Clark County is funding a 53-mile beltway solely with local tax dollars. These improvements in transportation infrastructure will reduce carbon monoxide and improve our air quality. I mention these programs because they are representative of the fact that in Clark County we are willing to take strong local action without mandates and therefore, deserve the right to chart our own course in meeting the environmental and transportation needs of this community. As you can see from chart 2, despite our significant growth, we have made substantial progress in meeting the carbon monoxide standard. It is important to point out however that new and improved roadways are not enough. We believe that with additional diligent local efforts, and through our continued partnerships with our Federal and State counterparts, we can meet the carbon monoxide standard as well as the PM10 standard. We believe this can be done through a combination of clean fuel requirements, more motor vehicle emissions testing, a regional dust control program and improvements in transportation and mass transit infrastructure.
We need your help however. We would hope that Congress would understand the need to keep Federal funds flowing to areas struggling to meet air quality standards. Additionally, we believe that the Tier II tailpipe standards proposed by the EPA are important in meeting our goals.
Certainly, we believe that local government is best suited to make important decisions about air quality improvement measures and priority transportation issues. Heavy handed federal intervention, as compared with cooperation, is almost always unwarranted, time consuming, and counterproductive. You will recall that the Board of County Commissioners decided in 1998 to accelerate construction of the beltway around Las Vegas. We learned that the fastest way to move ahead with this project was to "de-federalize" it. While there were many who were skeptical, we worked successfully with the Federal Highway Administration to regain local autonomy over the project. Working through our own Public Works Department we have opened eight miles of the southern beltway and early next year we hope to complete the entire southern segment and be well under way in the western and northern segments. We expect to complete the initial facility by 2003, which is 10 years ahead of the FHWA timetable. this will be a tremendous benefit to our community.
Finally, we want to pro-actively work to prevent ozone and fine particulate levels from becoming serious problems in the Las Vegas Valley, and would like to see the changes in Federal EPA regulations that would allow us to use cleaner fuels before the area exceeds the standards in question.
I appreciate this opportunity to provide local perspective on this important issue.
We would be happy to entertain any questions that you might have.