Nye County district protests Pahrump medical waste plant over water risks

The Nye County Water District has moved to block MediWaste Disposal LLC’s Pahrump medical waste project, turning a land-use fight into a direct challenge over the safety of Basin No. 162, the town’s only source of water.

The district’s governing board approved the protest at its April 14 regular meeting in the Nye County Board of County Commissioner Chambers in Pahrump. That objection matters because MediWaste already won a Conditional Use Permit from Nye County and is now seeking a separate state solid waste permit from the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, where the public comment period runs through May 1.

NDEP’s draft fact sheet places the proposed medical waste pyrolysis facility on a 4.70-acre heavy-industrial parcel at 1850 E. Basin Avenue, APN 035-191-52, near Highway 160. The site sits immediately west of a storage facility, with the Pahrump DMV and a local church farther west in an urban center, and a ready-mix concrete supplier to the east. The draft permit says the operation would use two existing buildings, secured 53-foot trailers, onsite air-pollution controls and no direct process-fluid discharge.

District leaders say that setup still raises too many questions for a basin that already carries enormous strain. A 2018 Pahrump Basin 162 Groundwater Management Plan called the basin one of the most over-appropriated in Nevada and said it has the highest density of domestic wells in the state. The plan said the published perennial yield of 20,000 acre-feet could support about 80,000 people under a 198-gallons-per-person-per-day planning goal, far below the valley’s potential growth.

General manager Dann Weeks told the board the district had already opposed the project before. Board member Helene Williams said community resistance remained strong and that groundwater risk was the central issue. Board member Bruce Holden was more cautious about endorsing a protest without more evidence, underscoring the tension between public alarm and the formal permit process now before the state.

The fight has been building for nearly two years. The Pahrump Regional Planning Commission approved the Conditional Use Permit on April 10, 2024, and the Nye County Commission chambers filled with residents on May 21, 2024, many of them opposing the plan. MediWaste has said its process would take medical waste delivered in secured containers by 53-foot trailers and convert it into residual biochar and a renewable fuel byproduct.

Nye County later adopted a hazardous-waste business moratorium effective Jan. 13, 2025, through Jan. 1, 2026, covering operations handling, processing, transporting or disposing of hazardous substance or toxic material within the water basin that supplies Pahrump. For MediWaste, the next real leverage now sits with NDEP, which must either issue or deny the permit under state rules.