Manufacturing companies have been operating since 1941 at the foot of Black Mountain, in the southeast quadrant of the Las Vegas Valley. Part of the land east of Boulder Highway was used for the disposal of a variety of industrial and municipal effluents into unlined evaporation ponds. This practice was industry standard and legal at the time. In 1976, the use of the unlined evaporation ponds was permanently discontinued.

At that time, Titanium Metals (TIMET) built a series of lined evaporation ponds under a permit issued by the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection. The ponds were used for effluent until 2005 when the LandWell Company constructed a water treatment facility on TIMET's manufacturing plant site to process TIMET's effluent. This allowed TIMET to permanently discontinue its permitted use of the evaporation ponds.

In 1991, under the supervision of the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, a voluntary private effort to investigate the land began. Investigations and studies have been ongoing and continuous for the last 16 years, during which more than 500,000 analyses have been completed from over 2,700 samples for up to 500 compounds per sample.  This testing went far beyond the originally manufactured compounds to ensure that no potential problems were overlooked. To view a map of the areas tested, please visit our Cool Science page.

Through investigation and study of the entire 2,200 acres, it has been determined that only approximately 400 acres of the site contain contaminants in concentrations that may pose an unacceptable risk to human health if left in place (restoration area map). The primary contaminants on the site are certain metals, radionuclides, pesticides, salts and asbestos. Please refer to Cool Science for a complete list of substances and compounds for which tests were conducted.

It is worth noting that the site was considered and rejected by the US Environmental Protection as a Superfund site. This essentially means the extent and type of contamination did not pose an immediate risk to human health. In addition, the contaminants found on the site are not characterized as "hazardous" under USEPA regulations. However, the combination and volume of contaminants are deemed to pose a health risk if left in place .

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