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?