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!
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