Clark County commissioners are ignoring U.S. District Judge Ronald B. Leighton’s order to abide by the state decision to upgrade the stormwater runoff plan.
In 1999, Clark County did the same thing but found that we citizens would have been fined $20,000 a day if the county did not finalize its runoff plan. This time the fine is $37,500 per day. We could not afford that then and we certainly cannot now. In 1999, commissioners wisely decided to finish the plan as ordered.
Now in 2012, the commissioners are again at it, led by Steve Stuart’s aggressive language to ignore the U.S. District Court. Nine of 12 streams are reported with fair to very poor health. If that was your child’s report card, there would be strict attention paid by any good parent. Kevin Gray, director of the county’s Department of Environmental Services, seems to feel that fair to very poor is OK. It’s hard to ignore that the work and money spent since the 1999 plan was implemented has not done enough.
Simply put, wasting our money by this macho exhibition does Clark County taxpayers no service. Staff time and legal fees used to fight this are misspent. Do we as citizens really want to gamble on this?
