SIMPSONS TO TAKE OVER RUGBY

"HOW IS IT THAT ALL THE SMART PEOPLE HAVE NO POWER AND ALL THE STUPID PEOPLE RUN THE TOWN?"

..asks L Simpson in a letter to the Advertiser about Rugby.

"Forget Evreux, forget Russelheim - surely by the control Cemex seems to have over the Council, and in particular the planning office, isn't it now time for us to be brought into the 21st century and be twinned with Sprigfield USA - home of the Simpsons?! I returned to Rugby after nine years in the north west to be alarmed to see there was a huge "nuclear power plant" at the site where the little old chimney for Rugby Cement used to be. In fact that little old chimney had metamorphosed into that monstrosity that is seen for miles and miles around - a true blot on the landscape. Who allowed planning for that, and how could Rugby Council sell us out and let it happen?"

"It seems to me that over the years it has been a case that what the cement works wants the cement works gets, and as quickly as our local representatives and the Department of the Environment can make it happen, irrespective of local opinion and the population in general" writes Geoff, Long Lawford resident.

NEW BILTON SIDING IS OPEN SPACE: according to Rugby's Local Plan, 2006, which shows it clearly marked as disused and in green! But Network Rail say they have been using it for 8+ years so why did they not put the coal trains on it to Rugby Cement, and save 30,000 lorry miles each year in Rugby town centre? They seem to want it all ways!

WALKER SUPPORT SERVICES are involved and CONSTRUCTION is going on with no consultation nor planning application. Local residents have NOT even been informed despite the Public Register claim by EWS/ Walker to have carried out:
"Significant Interaction with external organisations:
* Cemex plant and personnel;
* also home-owners on opposite side of proposed works."

RBC: we do not know if it needs planing permission. We think it is open space and disused.

WCC: we do not know if it needs planning permission. There are so many lorries on the roads going to the cement works it would be better to put them on the railway. "Air quality problems in Rugby are directly related to the large number of peak hour vehicles and HGVs travelling through the town centre." And no we do not know why we put them there!

WESTERN RELIEF ROAD: we do not know how 400 lorries a week are going to cross the road from the new New Bilton Sidings to the cement works.

EWS: we have submitted out of date maps. We do not need any planning permission, or to tell any local residents who will be affected by noise and pollution.

CEMEX DEADLINE:
Last coal delivery Rugby station 21st December. First coal delivery New Bilton 3rd January.. If coal supply is to be stockpiled it will need to be 5,600 tonnes - 700 tonnes for 8 days!

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS TO SHUT WORKS: LATEST for RBC EHO to grant LICENCE 21st Dec. "If the New Bilton Environmental Licence application response is negative there will be not be sufficient time to implement alternative arrangements." Shame!


This was all being "sneaked" through nicely, as they shut down the Rugby Cement Community Forum, concealed the information, and applications, and endeavoured to prevent all meetings and discussions, refusing to meet or talk with the community, and pretended the Environment Council was negotiating with the public in an "open honest transparent" manner, and trying to "move forward together." But move forward to where? The battle to wrest control of OUR Town, OUR environment, OUR air quality, and OUR health from CEMEX IS A TUG OF WAR MORE LIKE!

240,000 MILES OF CEMENT LORRIES IN RUGBY

THIS CENTURY WERE TOTALLY UNNECESSARY SAYS OUR RELIABLE SAUCE.

THE RAILWAY TO THE CEMENT WORKS "NEW BILTON SIDING" HAS BEEN FULLY OPERATIONAL SINCE BEFORE THE NEW CEMENT WORKS WAS BUILT!

ANY ENVIRONMENTALLY MINDED COMPANY COULD AND SHOULD, HAVE USED IF FOR COAL DELIVERIES - SAVING RUGBY RESIDENTS FROM 20,000 CEMENT PLANT LORRIES EVERY YEAR!

"The New Bilton Sidings is a part of the operational Network Rail network. This includes all tracks within the area, on both sides of the gates adjacent to the footpath crossing, and as far as the Lawford Road bridge. Beyond that point, the railway is disused, and has been formally closed. "

"The track layout was modernised and relaid in the late 1990's, and has been used by engineering trains, and for the transfer of road rail vehicles for track maintenance."

* Any suggestions why Rugby Cement have not used the railway to the plant? * Couldn't be anything to do with their PROFIT before our health and environment could it? * How much more would it have cost them to take the train to the works, instead of having 400 lorries a week in "lorry trains" through Rugby town? * Now they are being "forced", by the Rugby Station Remodel to use the line, and they try to pass it off a "gift" to residents? * Perhaps some kind of cost/benefit and environmental appraisal could have been done?
At the end of the day who is responsible for this fiasco, and unnecessary environmental damage and detriment? Who has failed to REGULATE and ENFORCE BEST PRACTISE?

NETWORK RAIL - provided the line last century.

RUGBY CEMENT - took the cheapest option for them - PROFIT!

WARWICKS CC - FAILED to make it planning CONDITION!

RUGBY BC - repeatedly gave Permits for unnecessary lorries.

ENVIRONMENT AGENCY - say transport nothing to do with them, and that they never considered how to get 5 MILLION TONNES of material in and out of the works when they were helping Rugby Cement to build the new plant in this location.

Haven't they ever heard : Location, location, location?

CEMENT PLANT PLOT UNFOLDS!

RUGBY COUNCIL PERMITS 160,000 EXTRA LORRIES TO POLLUTE TOWN CENTRE

AS CEMEX TO BENEFIT BY £ HUNDREDS THOUSANDS TAX PAYERS MONEY!

AIR QUALITY MANAGEMENT ZONE! NITROGEN DIOXIDE SOARS AS RUGBY POLLUTED BY LORRIES as Borough Council incompetents in the so-called "Environmental Health" Office cause polluting unsheeted coal lorries to jam town roads. Cemex finally admit to 600-800 lorry movements a day, up from a total 270 in 2003.

RAIL STATION TO CEMENT PLANT EWS applied in 1997 for a "permit to pollute Rugby" with a claimed extra 200 lorries a week to transport coal from the station to the Rugby cement plant by road. No BATNEEC assessment, as required by Law, was carried out. No Environmental Assessment as required was carried out. Simple Rugby Council gave Permit 31/EPA/3.4 & without a second thought permitted UNNECCESSARY
* extra 10,000 lorry journeys a year,
* extra 15,000 lorry miles a year in Rugby town centre.

In 2003 RBC EHO gave another permit 31/PPC/3.4 and the lorries had increased by then to a claimed 80 a day, five days a week = 400 a week. No public consultation, no BAT assessment, no consideration for the environment and no consideration for health even though air quality and lorries had become HUGE ISSUE S - RBC permitred the UNNECESSARY
* extra 20,000 lorry journeys a year
* extra 30,000 lorry miles in Rugby town centre.

RUGBY COUNCIL ENCOURAGES LORRIES IN TOWN
At a conservative estimate Rugby Borough Council has unnecessarily, and without any consideration for the environment, air quality, and the health of residents, even when it knew that an AQMA was necessary for heath protection, permitted at least 160,000 extra lorries on our roads for NO REASON AT ALL.

CONSERVATIVE CALCULATION:
1998-2001 10,000 X 4 = 40,000 extra journeys.
2002-2007 20,000 x 6 = 120,000 extra journeys.
TOTAL ten years = 160,000 extra journeys

Rugby Borough Council has always claimed it could do nothing about the cement plant traffic, and has always blamed the Warwickshire County Council Planning department for this environmental LORRY disaster, but now it emerges that the EHO actually DELIBERATELY permitted these unnecessary

240,000 EXTRA MILES run by CEMENT lorries in Rugby Town!

EWS FREIGHT TRAIN GRANTS FOR CEMEX SIDINGS In order to now remove these SLM's
SENSITIVE LORRY MILES off the town centre roads, valued at £1.74 per mile in the Calculation of Environmental Index, EWS have now received grants:
£266,625 EWS REPS B CEMEX
£199,584 EWS REPS B CEMEX
REPS is Environmental Benefit Procurement System. EWS also had cemex related grants of £150,000 in 2006-2007. For further information see Minister Tom Harris and Rail Freight Conference June, and Press release July 2007.

£417, 600 IN ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE TO RUGBY So how much has Rugby Borough Council cost the long-suffering Rugby Residents and Council Tax payers through its negligence - not to mention Health effects? How much has RBC cost the National Health Service?

240,000 miles at £1.74 = £417,600 calculated as environmental disbenefit for a start!

RUGBY CEMENT COMMUNITY FORUM And now RBC, in conjunction with Cemex and the so-called "Environment" Agency, haveshut down the Forum, after years of withholding information - or as they prefer to say "simply omitting to tell you" which in their book is not one and the same as hiding! As the editor of the Rugby Advertiser said 1 November:
"I THINK that some of the activities being carried out on behalf of CEMEX are taking place with undue speed and lack of decorum."

UNLAWFUL PLANNING AND OPERATING OF CEMENT PLANT It all re-inforces what I have always said, that the planning permission/s given by Warwickshire County Council were unlawful containing NO ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT, and no assessment for the transport to and from the works, and no BAT/BATNEEC assessment and no comparisons, as required by Law, with other possible sites and other modes of transport. A condition could have been applied to insist on the use of rail access, but this was not done, it now turns out deliberately, because the freight/cement plant could not get a GRANT to renew the line IF it was a planning condition to re-instate. Grants had been available all through the 1990's and the money offered was not taken up. Presumably because the Rail Freight Operators did not want the extra inconvenience and cost to them of using the New Bilton sidings?

WARWICKSHIRE CC OBJECTED TO COAL UNLOADING IN RUGBY WCC/Rugby Cement could have had, and probably did have in 1996 a "gentleman's agreement" to re instate rail links, and this might explain why WCC sent a very irate letter of OBJECTION to RBC when the first 1997 application for the unloading of coal at Rugby station , and transport through the town came in. WCC said "it makes no sense to bring all those coal lorries into the town centre and roads of Rugby when you can:
RE-OPEN THE NEW BILTON SIDINGS to get the coal directly into the plant."

RUGBY BOROUGH COUNCIL IGNORES COUNTY But Rugby rotten Council took no notice of the WCC OBJECTION and although to this day RBC continue to lay ALL the blame for RUGBY'S TRAFFIC and AIR QUALITY problems at the door of WCC, it is now revealed that RBC have DELIBERATELY DONE this to Rugby. No wonder they wanted to shut down the RCCF! SHARPISH!

DISUSED RAILWAY NEW BILTON

OR PUBLIC FOOTPATH?
Local walkers keep on bashing down the fence in order to access Network Rail's disused siding at New Bilton Rugby, where the re-modelling of the Rugby Station has caused the Rugby Cemex cement coal trains to be diverted from December, if permission can be obtained. Local ramblers claim to have been using the path regularly for 20 years, but EWS have advertised a public consultation into the LA-PPC permit to re-open the long disused line, now their access dispute with Network Rail is resolved.

In the meantime Cemex and WCC have attempted to temporarily close the Black Path that runs in parallel with the railway, along the edge of the quarry, with a drop of hundreds of feet, as apparently the quarry edge is subsiding, and walkers are in danger. The quarry path, fenced only with a small wire fence, has officially been cut off for six months, but no solution has been found. Cemex must either shore up and fence the path, or divert , possibly onto Network Rail's land. Seemingly the price tag of the rumoured £100,000 is too much. But several people have already
died in the other old cement plant quarry in Rugby, so the price tag would
surely appear reasonable.

Despite the "supposed" public consultation just starting, with EWS railways and RBC, into the LA-PPC application which has not been properly completed, it seems that Network Rail is already pushing on, clearing the line and cutting down trees in readiness for the 1600 tonne coal trains.
One wonders how safe the quarry path will be when the heavy trains start rumbling alongside there if it is already subsiding under the pressure of footfalls?

The Ordinance Survey map marks the railway as disused, so it seems the row will rumble on for a long time before the coal trains rumble along! What contingency plan do Cemex have if this plan to get 800 tonnes of coal each day into the works gets the thumbs down from Rugby Borough Council and the Rugby residents?

CEMENT FIRM PALTRY CONTRIBUTION £650,000
With the chaos currently being caused by the construction of the Western Relief Road, for which Rugby Cement is paying only a paltry £650,000 towards the construction of a roundabout at its plant, Rugby residents are wondering if Warwickshire County Council has sold out "Rugby town" too cheaply?