The dust is yet to settle..

(Yesterday at the Royal Courts of Justice)

Cemex claim the £400,000 fine for having a door in the reject silo hanging on its hinges, and then jammed in with a scaffolding pole was manifestly unfair, and that the courts should think again.

Not enough people complained about being covered in "dust" on the night of 14th to 15th October 2005- only a limited number in fact - so that's all right then!
No one mentioned that once it was on radio people did not bother to complain - knowing it was known.

That no one's health was damaged - as far as anyone knows - or bothered to try to find out.

That they cleaned up the area, and are a good company and this is not going to happen again, until next time.

The experts for both the defense (Dr Amanda Gair) and prosecution (Professor Roy Harrison), who had agreed the material facts about the dust in the case, (and that had not been protested about in the previous cases), are now said to have: "overplayed it"; and what was agreed was a "worst case scenario" ; that was irrelevant!

Bottom line is that (NOW) the dust came out of the stack; not the door!
So this is permitted and NO CRIMINAL OFFENCE occurred because they have NO EMISSION LIMIT VALUES on start up : or when the kiln is running, but with no kiln feed going in. There is, they said , much confusion among people who fail to understand that when they say "kiln stop" they actually mean "kiln feed stop", but the kiln goes on running to avoid buckling, cracking and catastrophic failure. So during this time (no one though to mention up to 200 tonnes an hour feed rate) no emissions count, so the Agency agree to this, that any amount of dust comes out. And it is "permitted" and "acknowledged as inevitable", that there will be dust and many spikes well off the scale.


There was a period, and in fact a night of instability, and a fire in the cooler, and kiln flush and 600 tonnes reject clinker, and tonnes of dust and smaller particles.. and and and....all this and during the afternoon of 14th tyres were being tried in the kiln - but no one thought to mention it.

Tyres and wastes are not to be burnt during instability and under 200 tonnes an hour feed rate.

But as pointed out previously no one seems to know when the kiln is stable or unstable.

The Rugby Cement Community Forum has now been abolished (yesterday by RBC) for daring to ask the Agency for a definition of stability, and for costing too much as they try to protect Rugby Residents - from the POLLUTER who does NOT PAY ANYTHING!!

LAST WORD
All this comes back to the fact that you cannot take what in essence is THREE MILLION TONNES of dust and mix it and cook it in a town's smokeless zone and turn it into TWO MILLION TONNES of other dust - called CEMENT without dust FREQUENTLY visibly going all over people, and invisibly going over them EVERY DAY. I do have a certain sympathy with Cemex as they bought this plant in good faith - not knowing is has no lawful planning permission or operating Permit.

The appeal courts heard that the cement plant makes 1.3 million tonnes cement (creative accounting) and that the plant has been here since 1865, first with Portland Cement, then RMC, and now finally by Cemex.

Apparently its location is "an accident of history"!

Presumably they are judging it by 1865 environmental standards; and 1865 environmental law as well; and the 1865 planning permission?

WASTED - Whole town going to pot?

RUGBY RESIDENTS SOON TO BE HAPPIER AS IMPORTED WEED MAKES AIR SWEETER

RUGBY BOROUGH COUNCIL ADVERT.. RUGBY ADVERTISER
"Each year in Rugby we throw away enough Rubbish to fill the Ken Marriot swimming pool 129 times, or to put it another way, fill enough lorries to stretch nose to tail from the Clock Tower Rugby to the NEC Birmingham. It's a fact that more than 32,000 tonnes of rubbish gets thrown away each year."

CEMEX HAZARDOUS WASTE
Hazardous waste production increases when burning wastes, as we saw in the recent inadequate tyre trials at Cemex Rugby, where both bypass dust and reject clinker increased. Funnily enough the hazardous waste bypass dust produced in Rugby Cement is about the same daily tonnage of household waste produced by Rugby residents. Now we are to have one bin every two weeks, to SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT! Household waste is only a fraction of the industrial waste!

APPLICATION TO ENVIRONMENT AGENCY
Cemex Rugby now wish to burn CLIMAFUEL : London's household and Commercial Waste at 15 tonnes an hour, 360 tonnes a day, = 132,000 tonnes a year, to be trucked up the M1 by lorry. Enough waste to fill 530 swimming pools, and to fill enough lorries to stretch nose to tail from Rugby Clock Tower to the NEC over FOUR times.

WHICH VERSION DO YOU BELIEVE?

CLIMAFUEL TRIAL GOING WELL:
Cemex South Ferriby Liaison Committee: "The Climafuel trial is ongoing and going well."

CLIMAFUEL TRIAL NOT GOING WELL
South Ferriby Parish Council Minutes: "The Climafuel trial has been suspended due to excess levels of some metals being detected."

HOUSEHOLD WASTE TO BE SHIPPED IN - TO RUGBY?
AS APPARENTLY NOT ENOUGH HOUSEHOLD WASTE IS GENERATED IN THE UK!

CEMEX South Ferriby Liaison Committee: " The only disappointment has been with the supply chain for Climafuel. Shanks have not been able to provide sufficient Climafuel. At the moment we are in discussions to find alternative UK supplies. We are also talking to a DUTCH supplier of Climafuel, which will be shipped in by boat into a local port".

Councillor England pointed out that there is a new incinerator being installed at HULL; (i.e. adjoining South Ferriby) and he felt it was a shame that more people were not aware of Cemex on the south bank of the Humber being able to dispose of waste materials. Councillor Berry added that it was regrettable that we have to import waste materials."

What DOPE thought this up?!

The Outlaws

RUGBY RESIDENTS ON WARPATH
As polluter refuses to pay.
Rugby Cement rips off Rugby residents, yet again, as sorry saga goes on, and on, and on......

RUGBY CEMENT COMMUNITY FORUM to be disbanded because the polluter does not pay, and Rugby people can no longer provide the approximate £10,000 each quarterly meeting costs in order to try to protect themselves.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN
Imagine this - Rugby people sitting quietly at home minding their own business, and along comes Rugby Cement who claim they wish ONLY to "improve" the environment and air quality in Rugby by "upgrading" their old stinking, polluting, 300,000 tonne a year cement plant, which cannot meet the new IPC regulations. So they hatch a plan to tell people it will only be three times bigger; submit an application to Warwickshire County Council, without any environmental impact assessment, and gain a planning permission, without appropriate and honest public consultation in February 1996. Then they go on and on increasing the planned size of the plant to 2 million tonnes - in secret.

SECRET IPC PERMIT
Meanwhile the arch enemy of the environment is secretly involved in a "staged" IPC application which was never DULY MADE and for which not one penny for the "application" changed hands - so we are told - as being "staged" Rugby Cement put on each "stage", of which there are many from 1995 to 1999, that "no money need to be paid for this application until the application is finished, because it is staged". So on June 16th 1999 Rugby Cement finally finished the last of all stages, and then a decision was made by the Agency to keep the application secret and to tell only a few trusted statutory consultees, and to tell them NOT to put any of this on the Public Register. Warwickshire County Council, having been involved all along in this trickery, were suddenly denoted as "NOT" consultees.

Rugby Cement decided NOT to advertise the IPC application in the London Gazette and local press - as required by Law. Rugby Borough Council officer/s/councillor/s (?) decided in secret, and in grave dereliction of duty, with no records, minutes, or consultation with anyone, simply "not to reply" to the IPC application. That was the sum total of this Council's considered opinion and care for the community - NO WE HAVE NO OPINION! They decided to make no effort whatsoever to try to limit the damage that was about to be inflicted on Rugby people and environment in February 2000 when the new plant was to start up.

The secret IPC permit was issued in September 1999, by which time the IPPC regime had been brought into Law and the plant SHOULD have made an IPPC application straight away BEFORE operating at all. Then by stealth the IPPC application was made in September 2001, but the public were told by all the conspirators that this was ONLY a tyre burning application. Only data and reports about tyre burning were given out, and the IPPC application was never revealed - except to RBC EHO who yet again chose to ignore a PPC application, and to make no response!

SECRET IPPC APPLICATION
This then collapsed into farce as the Agency wasted thousands of pounds of public money in the sham and false consultation, and ably aided by RBC, they then allowed Rugby Cement to put its hand into Rugby tax council tax payers pockets for the long-term suppression of Rugby people. They set up a Rugby Cement Community Forum to be funded by Rugby residents, and later on a tyre Burning Review group was suggested by the Agency as a means of assessing the impending tyre trial. So Rugby volunteers, and councillors, worked night and day for the community studying cement plant issues, while the Rugby tax payer funded the officers and administration to the apparent tune of about £10,000 each meeting. Plus many hundreds of thousands of pounds on consultants and reports, legal opinions. large public meetings, etc.

RBC SAYS TYRE TRIALS NOT SUCCESS
Rugby Borough Council, COUNCILLORS, wrote to the Agency saying that the Tyre Trials had NOT been a success, that there were major concerns about plant instability, efficiency, abnormal operations, lack of data and that the SEVEN CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS had most definitely NOT been met. The Agency took not a blind bit of notice as usual, and it was left up to the public to issue JUDICIAL REVIEW proceedings against the Agency as RBC wasted yet more of our money and FAILED to follow through. RBC looked ever weaker and more pathetic as the cement company and Agency continued to refuse to respond to the Council's concerns. RBC should be LIVID!

RBC GIVE IN TO DEMANDS
But instead they have meekly given in to the Agency and Cemex. Now as a final straw you can read about how RBC has suddenly decided to back-track, after all this time that Rugby people have been ripped off, SEVEN YEARS of banditry, that the POLLUTER must now PAY for the meetings, and for the liaison committee. The people can no longer afford to PAY to PROTECT OURSELVES. After years of Rugby Cement's filching off us, and demanding that we have meetings at their every beck and call, when they wish to increase pollution, increase wastes, increase emissions, increase capacity, increase hazardous waste to landfills, etc, now they are going to be in charge of the liaison committee. As they were previously when it was a closed shop, held at the works, with the cement plant controlling the members, agenda, minutes, and prohibiting the public and press.

RCCF TO BE DISBANDED BECAUSE WE:
# ask too many questions
# understand only too well what is going on
# refuse to be fobbed off by the non-answers
# follow through
# punch above our weight
# write reports Cemex and the Agency do not like
# tell the truth about the forum and how it "operates"
# realised that RBC officers have also been with holding crucial information


OFFICERS REPORT makes interesting reading:
# "RBC took over the responsibility for the forum from Rugby Cement as a short-term measure when the initial tyre burning application was made". Oh really? And now they have got it all "through", and brought in full scale co-incineration we are of no further use and are to be discarded - is that it?

# "A community/industry liaison group has a valuable role to play in education and informing the local community about the activities and developments at the Rugby cement Plant. It is also a mechanism for community issues and concerns to be raised and discussed, and addressed in a constructive and positive manner. The Current RCCF does not realistically achieve this as it can be adversarial in nature which is probably due to the history of hostility, abuse , and ongoing litigation between participants." Oh really? The problems have arisen because the authorities and Rugby Cement refuse to answer questions, reveal information, discuss openly and honestly, to engage with the community, because fundamentally what has happened is unlawful, and the RCCF was set up in order to blind and confuse the community, and to "out wit us".

LEOPARDS ABOUT TO CHANGE THEIR SPOTS?
# "The Environment Agency has advised they do not facilitate any such group anywhere else in the country and would consider it inappropriate as the Regulator to do so. Therefore this only leaves CEMEX as a credible future facilitator. This is entirely appropriate for a variety or reasons:

1. This is the normal industry model across the country.
2. It reinforces the principal of the "polluter pays" and,
3. It is in the company's interests to ensure that they have an open and honest relationship with local communities." Oh really? In their interests? Well we have just been through years of consultation with them and it appears that even the Councillors were able to understand that it was NOT in the company's interests to have ANY open and honest dialogue at all, and that is why they have REFUSED point blank to have any "open honest relationship with local communities" - backed up by the Agency who also refuse to have any open and honest dialogue.

# "Initial discussions with CEMEX have confirmed that they would be prepared to take over the role of facilitator of a "refreshed" RCCF at their own expense." Oh really?
How very big, and generous, and thoughtful, and kind, and caring, and compassionate of them. They are even going to contribute towards a £15,000 "stakeholder analysis" report, to be commissioned by a "specialist company" that would go out and carefully choose the new members, so that the whole thing runs smoothly!

CLICK THIS LINK TO DOWNLOAD

ADVERT
Anyone know anyone who is wet behind the ears, and green, and enjoys being ripped off, having their time wasted, being dictated to, fooled, and bullied?

Please forward their names on a postcard for the new liaison committee.

ON THE WARPATH

As widely reported in the RUGBY TIMES, (Rugby's excellent new weekly) a Judicial Review has been commenced in a bid to the courts to put an end to costly, time wasting, sham consultations, as carried out by the Agency and cement company, as Rugby Borough Council endorses Rugby in Plume's view that the whole TYRE TRIAL was a scam. The Agency have acted perversely and unreasonably, and still after seven years of asking cannot define what they mean by the words "unstable" and "stable", and "significant" and "insignificant" - the words they use in their own IPPC permits for the control of the cement plant's emissions. If the Agency does not know what they mean - then who does? And why do they put them in? We were charged with deciding if the plant had become more "unstable", and if the increased emissions were "significant" etc etc.

These second Judicial Review proceedings have been issued against the Environment Agency, as the tyre trials are branded:

# inconclusive,
# case not proven,
# 7 Critical Success Factors not met,
# essential data with held,
# Tyres Protocol not adhered to,
# plant more inefficient during trials,
# net environmental detriment increased,
# 1,000 hours baseline produced 240,000 tonnes clinker,
# 1,000 hours tyre trial produced 190,000 tonnes clinker,
# hazardous waste bypass dust increased with tyres,
# reject clinker increased with tyres,
# public not informed as the trials went along,
# data given too late, in wrong format, and too little.
# no data provided at all until 10 months after trial started,
# no data provided at all until 5 months after trial finished,
# Tyres Protocol requires public to be informed as the trial proceeds!

The list is endless, and all this was UNANIMOUSLY agreed in a report by the Tyre Burning Review Group, set up by the Environment Agency specifically as a COMMUNITY GROUP to evaluate and review the tyre trials and the data, and to decide if the trials had met the seven critical success factors that the cement industry had proposed itself as the criteria for success - or failure - as in this case! It consisted of 12 people, facilitated by consultant Dr Mike Holland, who expertly guided the group as we studied the CEMEX DRAFT TYRE TRIAL REPORT. The representatives included the Rugby Primary Care Trust, the Health Protection Agency, Rugby Borough Councillors, Local Parish Councillors, Agenda 21, Rugby in Plume, the Rugby Cement Community Forum, New Bilton Community Association.

Now the Agency considers allowing Cemex to carry out a "pseudo trial " of tyres in combination with London's household and commercial waste - the RDF being disguised under the friendly name of "CLIMAFUEL".

RUGBY BOROUGH COUNCIL:
Rugby Council fully backs the findings of the Tyre Burning Review Group, and endorses their findings.

See link to www.rugby.gov.uk Committee Papers of CABINET 8th January 2007.


SUCCESSFUL APPLICATION OF MUSHROOM SYNDROME : CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTOR NUMBER ONE : to be applied for new household waste "trial" as Rugby residents are to be kept in the dark, as usual, with bucket loads of manure tipped on their heads - along with tonnes of gaseous pollutants and toxic chemicals.