MediWaste's plans for its Pahrump medical waste plant have been rewritten so many times that the state's own engineers now use a word the company refuses to say: incinerator.
IF YOU ASKED MediWaste what it plans to build at 1850 East Basin Avenue, the honest answer would be: it depends on which document you read.
The plans have changed… Then changed and again and again. The old design and the new design share almost nothing but the parcel line. The old design had two reactors, plasma, catalysts, and 375,000 pounds of flammable chemicals in tanks. The new design has seven ovens, no chemicals, no biochar, no liquid fuel, and no way to test if it works before it starts running.
None of the plans have been proven at this site, on Pahrump medical waste, at the volumes MediWaste is proposing. Not one.
The plan that keeps changing shape
In 2023 and 2024, MediWaste told regulators the plant would use two pyrolysis reactors in series. Plasma. Catalyst. Fuel oil recovery. Wastewater treatment. Roughly 375,000 pounds of dimethyl ether and methanol in on-site storage tanks. (Pyrolysis is heat treatment in a sealed chamber with no oxygen.)
By 2025 and 2026, all of that was gone. The new plan is seven stand-alone ovens made by a company called Vulcan Systems. Each oven has a pyrolysis chamber, a plasma chamber, and a thermal oxidizer. The plant now runs on about 28 million BTUs an hour of natural gas. MediWaste says the plant produces “no effluents, biochar, or liquid fuel.” The only output is hydrated ash. Same 4.71 acres. Same company. A completely different machine.
The state noticed. In April 2025, NDEP wrote to MediWaste: “If there are changes to the process described, a new review will be required.” Translation: start over, and they did.
The numbers came from someone else's plant
Here’s what MediWaste has not done. It has not tested a single one of its seven ovens on Pahrump medical waste. It has not tested them at the 4,000-pound batch size it proposes to run. It has not tested them, at all, at this site.
Instead, MediWaste's emissions numbers come from what NDEP calls “like-kind” pyrolysis units. A California facility with a test batch in 2016 at 2,236 pounds. Another in 2019 at 2,674 pounds. And a Texas plant in 2023 at 28,980 pounds.
None of those batch sizes match the 4,000-pound batches MediWaste plans in Pahrump. NDEP itself said in the record that it would need to compare the applications “to verify these units are in fact identical.”
The dust numbers are worse. Fugitive dust factors in MediWaste's application come from a 1998 EPA study. Not a study of medical waste. Not a study of pyrolysis. A study of cement kilns.
The “like-kind” plants may be his own
MediWaste's technical principal is Dr. Fortunato Villamagna. Before this project, he was CEO of Paragon Waste Solutions and Paragon Southwest Medical Waste in Texas, a plasma medical waste operation. Now he is president of Comstock Metals.
The “like-kind” facilities MediWaste is citing to justify its Pahrump emissions numbers plausibly trace to his own prior ventures. Not independent third parties. Not an open, verified track record. His old companies.
The word the company refuses to say
MediWaste tells the public, over and over, that its process is not incineration. Its president told the Pahrump Valley Times: “our process does not involve incineration and therefore, does not produce emissions common to incinerators.”
The state disagrees. On the record.
NDEP's Technical Review of MediWaste's air permit, dated March 18, 2026, states plainly that the pyrolysis units “meet the definition of incinerator, NAC 445B.086.” That is not an opinion. It is in the state's own formal permit document.
Internally, NDEP staff went further. In a thread from September through November 2025, NDEP air engineer Randy Phillips concluded the units “are incinerators as defined in NAC 444.584 and NAC 445B.086.” He listed three sets of state rules the plant would have to follow. And he added a warning: a federal exemption “does not mean we can ignore the NAC regs.”
Separately, NDEP's Bureau of Sustainable Materials Management asked MediWaste directly “why they are not an incinerator.” Two different branches. One conclusion.
Then the Bureau declined to impose incinerator conditions in the final draft permit.
“The pyrolysis units meet the definition of incinerator, NAC 445B.086.”NDEP Technical Review of MediWaste Air Permit AP4953-4771, March 18, 2026 |
The applicant asked to test less
In August 2025, MediWaste's consultant Trinity wrote to NDEP with a series of requests about testing the ash. First, they asked for “an initial moisture test only.” Then, if more was needed, “a significantly less frequent testing schedule, once per year.” Then, if still more was required, “a visual observation of the hydrated ash.” Not a lab test. Just a look.
On wind controls for ash handling, the consultant wrote: “We do not anticipate winds will effect any emissions.”
Where does 95 percent of the waste go?
MediWaste plans to process about 15,000 tons of medical waste every year. The ash output the company describes is about 5 percent by weight. Roughly 767 tons of ash a year.
The other 95 percent, about 14,600 tons a year, does not disappear. Mass has to go somewhere. What is not in the ash is going up the stack as gas. Carbon dioxide. Water vapor. Hydrogen chloride from PVC plastic. Sulfur dioxide. Metals. Particulates. Dioxins and furans.
The byproducts did not vanish between the old plan and the new one. They moved. From storage tanks the public could point to, into the air.
There is nowhere for the ash to go
At the July 7, 2026 public hearing, NDEP said on the record that the Pahrump Landfill will not accept MediWaste's residue. That was the company's stated plan. Send the ash to the local landfill.
Nevada has one commercial hazardous waste landfill. US Ecology Nevada, in Beatty. NDEP's own fact sheet on that facility says twice: “This facility will not accept bio-hazardous or radioactive wastes or waste containing dioxins.”
The next nearest option is Apex Regional Landfill near Las Vegas. Apex could take non-hazardous ash under a special-waste profile MediWaste has not obtained. And cannot obtain until the ash is tested. And the ash cannot be tested until the plant is running. Nowhere in the current permit record is a receiving landfill identified or secured.
The pattern
Plans that keep changing. Numbers borrowed from other people's plants, at different batch sizes, on different materials. Dust factors from a 1998 cement study. The state's own engineers using a word the company refuses to say in public. A consultant asking for a visual glance in place of a laboratory test. Ninety-five percent of the input mass unaccounted for outside the stack. Ash with no place to go.
MediWaste is asking Pahrump to accept plans that have never been tested here, on this waste, at this scale, in this valley. Every time the state pushes on the numbers, the plan gets rewritten. Every time a piece of equipment cannot do what it was promised to do, it is replaced with a piece of equipment that has not been tested either.
The question is not which of MediWaste's plans is true. The question is which one will still be current the day the state signs the permit. And whether Pahrump will find out about the next change before or after the plant is running.
About this investigation
This article is drawn from primary source public records. Every quote attributed to a regulator, an engineer, or the applicant comes from a formal state document, a permit filing, or the transcript of a public meeting.
MediWaste Disposal LLC, its counsel Kaempfer Crowell, and its consultants Trinity and Geosyntec were not asked to comment for this article. If they wish to respond to any specific claim above, the record is open.
Sources
1. Nye County Planning Department, CU-24-3 file and related planning records: https://www.nyecountynv.gov/95/Planning
2. Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Air Pollution Control. Air Permit AP4953-4771 file, including the March 18, 2026 Technical Review, the July–August 2025 RFI thread, the April 3, 2025 letter requiring a new review, and the internal Sept–Nov 2025 deliberative thread: https://ndep.nv.gov/air/air-pollution-control-permitting/air-quality-operating-permits
3. Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Sustainable Materials Management. Solid Waste Permit SW1900REV00, draft permit and July 7, 2026 public hearing record: https://ndep.nv.gov/waste/solid-waste
4. Pahrump Valley Times coverage of the MediWaste project (Robin Hebrock and staff): https://pvtimes.com/?s=MediWaste
5. Dr. Fortunato Villamagna professional background: Paragon Waste Solutions and Paragon Southwest Medical Waste (Texas), plasma medical waste technology branded CoronaLux; currently President of Comstock Metals. Source: company filings and public business records.
6. US Ecology Nevada, RCRA Permit NEVHW0025 Rev. 8 fact sheet, published by NDEP Bureau of Sustainable Materials Management. The fact sheet states twice that the facility “will not accept bio-hazardous or radioactive wastes or waste containing dioxins”: https://ndep.nv.gov/waste/hazardous-waste
