TRUTH - at last.

Rugby Council finally admit responsibility for POLLUTING whole town, and ruining total ENVIRONMENT for residents and visitors alike.

RBC finally admitted, after dragging its feet for years, and trying every which way to hide the facts, and to keep them off the Public Register (which is still the case), that "it was consulted upon the staged IPC authorisation application", of which the first stage began in January 1995 and ended with the last stage in June 1999 - when Rugby Cement finally finished the Application. In a letter of 24th June 1999 the Council and various other bodies were consulted on the finally finished application. It said on the letter from the Environment Agency "DO NOT DIVULGE ANY OF THIS INFORMATION: do not place on any Public Register!" Neither the Environment Agency, nor RBC can find any copies of the MANDATORY public consultation, nor advertisements in any newspapers, and that is hardly surprising since they do not have any! They had expressly told Rugby Council, and MAFF, and others to keep it all SECRET!

RBC have this to say about its behaviour, in relation to the documentation it received (and some of which it hid) over the FOUR PLUS years, which has led to the unlawful construction and operation of this gross industrial behemoth in Rugby:

"It is the holistic consideration of a range of documents and information that would have been used to form opinions and judgements. No formal responses were made in relation to this permit during the period between 1995 and 1999.

The Council was a consultee over the permitting process. There is NO DUTY on the Council or any other consultee (statutory or otherwise) to make responses. The Council had been extensively involved in the planning application for the new plant, which covered many of the pollution issues repeated in the permit Application. This was the context within which no formal responses to the permit Consultation was made."

So you see that the officers were secretly involved, behind the backs of the people, in secret discussions for years, and yet made NO FORMAL RESPONSE, (so there is no paperwork for anyone to see what they were thinking and doing) and yet now RBC claim that none of the pollution and environmental impact can be attributed to them. IF as they claim they have been involved all along why did they:

A) Deliberately aid the "destruction" of Rugby town: environment and air quality, and health?
B) Hide it all, make no response at all to try to limit the damage to Rugby people, and do it all in secret behind the backs of the people, and the Councillors?
C) Behave unlawfully and DELIBERATELY HIDE the official CONSULTATION and Application papers?
D) Refuse to accept any responsibility for this mess, while all the time continuously blaming Rugby Cement and the Environment Agency?

They then try to "Get Out of Jail Free" by saying it is not their fault: "The responsibility for publicising the IPC application lay with the Environment Agency and the Applicant." Even IF that were to be a true statement, then RBC could and SHOULD have not only made a formal response, but also have insisted and ensured that the public were consulted. But instead RBC colluded to hide the whole June 1999 IPC Application from Rugby people.

They then subsequently in 2001 went on to compound further their "irregularities" by spending a massive amount of Public time and money of a PHONEY TYRE BURNING APPLICATION in order to keep the Public away from the actual IPPC APPLICATION that we should have been consulted on. They say: "The Council did arrange a wide-ranging process of public engagement which started after 1999". (YES, in truth they did start a phoney consultation TWO YEARS LATER, and a fat lot of good that was in 2001 - shutting the stable door after the IPC horse has bolted!) "The community engagement process was primarily focussed on the specific issue regarding the use of alternative fuels, but did explore other issues." (Even this is not true as they, and WCC, and the EA and Rugby Cement called all the meetings and associated paperwork Tyre Burning Trials - no mention of alternative fuels.)

RBC and the EA then went even further and indulged in £500,000 worth of flawed air quality monitoring - all paid for by the long-suffering Rugby Council tax payers - to try, in desperation, to PROVE that there "really is no problem with air quality in Rugby, especially round the cement works where people are frequently covered in dust". They threw the Primary Care Trust representative out of the committee, and also all the Community Groups, and Air Quality Report was very much controlled by the Rugby Cement and its needs, and was also ultimately rushed through without any proper public consultation, and with the public not having any timely access to the data. Many questions remain over the refusal to provide the agreed access to real-time monitoring data, the controversial sitting of the monitors, the calibration, and the failure to correctly use the Turnkey Monitors, and the correct gravimetric equivalent method for the particulates PM10.

WHAT NEXT?
No wonder Rugby Cement, knowing all this, sold the plant to RMC in 1999 just before the construction was finished. Then they in turn realising the mess they were in offloaded it onto Cemex in 2004, and now Cemex are making it work better and have increased production by turning off the alarms and burning more waste and dirtier cheaper "fuels", such as petcoke, which RBC and the Agency have inflicted on Rugby people. Click below to find out what they do in Mexico.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cemex21may21,0,3111299,full.story?coll=la-home-business