How Nye County Facilitated Mediwaste To An Easy Approval

APPEAL MEDIWASTE PERMIT HERE: https://sec.nv.gov/participate/sec-appeal-process/

The county didn’t get fooled. It held the door open. It ran a hospital-waste burner through the easy permit, ignored the state’s own fire warning, buried an opposition letter and went quiet. Now the county still has to vote, and that is where Pahrump can still stop it.

Mediwaste wants to run tons of hospital waste through high-heat ovens in the middle of Pahrump, 1850 East Basin Avenue, top of the only water basin this valley has.

On August 26, 2026, the State of Nevada handed MediWaste a permit. But the state is not the reason this got so far. Your own county government is. Here is how they did it.

The fight is not over. MediWaste cannot turn on a single oven without Nye County’s approval, and that vote happens in the open, in front of you. There is also a state appeal, and the clock on it is nearly gone. We walked through exactly how to file it, and the real deadline, in The people of Pahrump said no. Read that one today, not tomorrow.

MediWaste swears its ovens are not burning. It calls the process pyrolysis, which is a fancy word for cooking waste at high heat. Nevada’s own engineers looked at the machines and wrote down a different word: incinerator. Same heat, same stack, same gases coming down on your neighborhood. The state permit shows what goes in: medical waste, including chemotherapy waste, body-part waste, and old drugs.

The easy door

Every risky business that comes to a county faces two doors.

Behind the hard door is a real safety review. Nevada law, NRS 278.147, says that when a business handles hazardous material, the county’s elected board has to stop and take a hard look before anyone breaks ground.

Behind the easy door is a plain permit, a Conditional Use Permit, the same rubber stamp a warehouse or a storage yard gets.

Nye County’s Planning Department, run at the time by Brett Waggoner, walked MediWaste straight through the easy door.

They ran it under the ordinary rule (NCC 17.04.920 and NRS 278.315) skipped the hazardous review the law built for exactly this kind of plant.

They did it with the warning sitting right in front of them. The state had already told the county, in writing, that this process can catch fire and explode, and that one of its gases is heavier than air and can crawl into storm drains. That warning was printed inside the county’s own staff report. They read it. They used the easy door anyway.

One story for the town, another for the state

When MediWaste stood in front of the Pahrump planning board in April 2024, it told a fairy tale. “Renewable” fuel. “No combustion.” “No perceived adverse impacts.” No count of machines. No tonnage. Never the words chemotherapy, or body parts, or drugs.

The real plan was uglier: seven pyrolysis units, up to 15,120 tons of medical waste a year, hundreds of tons stored on site, taking chemo waste, body-part waste, and drug waste. The state later bumped the limit to 41.4 tons a day. We laid out the full bait and switch in Why Four Different Plans. The short version: MediWaste never changed the machines to win the town’s vote. It changed the story, and the board went along.

The permit that quietly died

A CUP comes with rules. MediWaste’s had two that matter.

Special Condition 7 gave the company six months, until October 9, 2024, to file a second, detailed set of plans, called a CAT II Site Development plan. Nothing was allowed to happen on the site until those plans were approved.

Standard Condition 2 says that if the company breaks a condition, the permit is cancelled on the spot.

No record has surfaced that MediWaste filed those plans on time, or even asked for more time. The permit has been dead by its own terms for nearly two years. MediWaste also never went back to the planning board or the commissioners to show them the new, bigger plan. Why would it? The county never made it.

That is the one piece of good news. The county still holds the final key. Before MediWaste can operate, the planning board (RPC) and the county board (BOCC) have to vote in public. They can still say no.

Kunzi went quiet, then built a wall

District Attorney Brian Kunzi is the county’s top lawyer, the official paid to catch exactly this. When MediWaste slipped through the easy door, his office said nothing. When a resident sued, Kunzi’s office did not defend the public. It moved to throw the resident’s case out, and won on a technicality, so a judge never ruled on whether the plant is safe.

Then Kunzi found his voice and pointed it the wrong way. In December 2024 he wrote Chapter 8.44, a county rule that finally admitted this kind of business is hazardous and paused new licenses for it, with fines up to $1,000 a day. The same office that had just defended the approval turned around and called the activity hazardous.

Then he drew a line on a map. In the fall of 2024, after MediWaste was already approved, Kunzi brought commissioners a 10-mile buffer. Inside that circle around Pahrump, no one could process hazardous material, including medical waste, solar panel recycling, and batteries. Mining was left out.

Read the order out loud. Wave MediWaste in. Then build a 10-mile wall so no competitor can follow. The county has never said in public whether MediWaste is exempt, and it does not have to, because MediWaste is already inside the wall. A ban that shows up after one company is already in is not a ban. It is a moat.

Follow the money

Did MediWaste buy this? Follow the money and the truth is sharper than a simple yes.

The men who own MediWaste, the Oganesian family, and the science front man, Dr. Fortunato Villamagna, gave nothing to any Nye County official. We searched state and federal records by name. Empty. Remember that the next time someone tells you this was all above board.

Money did reach the four commissioners who rule these votes. It came through MediWaste’s own law firm. Kaempfer Crowell handed about $17,000 to Ron Boskovich, Brian Kunzi, John Koenig, and Debra Strickland, a burst of it in the same early-2026 weeks that developers and waste haulers all wrote checks to the same names within days of each other. Look it up yourself in the state’s Aurora campaign finance system.

A national trash company, Waste Connections, spread about $9,850 across those same four. It is not MediWaste, but it works the same business and wants the same friends.

And the firm that sold MediWaste its building, Access Realty, put $3,000 into planning commissioner Walt Turner’s campaign.

Access Realty is owned by Turner’s own mother, Kim Washington. Hold that thought.

Two projects, one street

Now watch the same officials handle two plants on the same street in the same season.

MediWaste, the medical waste burner, sat at 1850 East Basin. One block east, at 2850 East Basin, a company called i-Quest wanted to recycle old solar panels. Solar recycling is no saint. It handles glass, metals, and some toxic pieces, and it makes dust and waste of its own. It does not set hospital waste on fire over the town’s drinking water.

The county approved the medical waste burner 5 to 0. It denied the solar recycler.

Walt Turner sat on the board for both. On MediWaste he stepped aside, because he was the agent who sold MediWaste the building and pocketed a $15,000 commission on the deal, in his own words at a public meeting. Good. That is what stepping aside is for.

Two months later, on the solar plant one block away, Turner did not step aside. He made both motions to kill it and never mentioned that he was the busiest industrial broker on that street. County staff had recommended approval. Then Brett Waggoner, the planning director, helped the board rewrite its reasons for saying no so the denial would survive an appeal. The same government that torched a solar recycler’s application rolled out the carpet for burning medical waste next door.

The pattern, in plain sight

Line it up. The easy door instead of the hard one. A state fire-and-explosion warning read and ignored. A sweet story for the town and the ugly one for the state. A permit that looks dead, with no one in the county willing to say so. A district attorney who went quiet, then walled off every competitor. Money from the burner’s own lawyers landing with the four commissioners who hold the votes. And the same broker greasing medical waste in while helping shove solar recycling out, one block apart.

No single line proves a crime, and we are not claiming one. But stack them up and this is not a run of bad luck. It is a county that made it easy for an out-of-state company to burn medical waste over Pahrump’s water, and hard for the people who tried to stop it.

What happens next

The state permit is not the last word, and neither is the state. MediWaste still cannot start a single oven without Nye County’s approval. Commissioner John Koenig said it himself: “Before they can operate, they need a permit from us.” That vote happens in the open. The planning board and the five county commissioners, Ron Boskovich, Debra Strickland, John Koenig, Bruce Jabbour, and Ian Bayne, will have to look this town in the eye and say yes or no. The state appeal is closing fast, so if you want to file, do it now and follow the steps in our permit story.

Sources

This story is built only from public records, county meeting minutes, and state filings, all linked above. It does not accuse any person of a crime. It lays out the public record and asks fair questions. See something we got wrong, or have a document we should see? Tell us.

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