RUGBY CEMEX CO-INCINERATOR

(click on image to enlarge)
UNACCEPTABLE, UNSUITABLE, UNLAWFUL, SITE OF INDUSTRIAL WASTE DUMP, ENCOMPASSING OPEN AIR WASTE STORAGE, CO-INCINERATION, BLENDING, AND DISCRETE (SECRET) INCORPORATION OF ALL MANNER AND QUANTITIES OF WASTES INTO CEMENT.

WHY OH WHY? IT MAKES NO SENSE!
We Rugby Residents are now in our fourth year of TYRE TRIALS,
with a further one year trial starting to see "how they can manage
to get to 6 tonnes per hour over the course of a year". With a
little bit of luck, and some 15tph of household/commercial/industrial waste
thrown in for good measure. The public were told in the "tyre trials application and non technical summary" that the trials to 10tph would be over within 6 months by 2004, but they are still struggling on with all manner of excuses why they have failed to succeed.
Apparently all this effort just to prove that the 0.15% of particulate emissions emitted from the main stack comes exclusively from the burning of the fuel, which is "not adversely affected by the substitution involved in tyre burning", while the other 99.85% of emissions comes from the raw material "cooking". Believe it - or not! Meanwhile they change the raw materials (responsible for 99.85% emissions) to substitutes/wastes - without any trial, consultation or comment? And Cemex fitted £6 million pounds of bag filters to meet the Waste Incinerator Directive - for the reduction of the particulate emissions from fuel burning emissions from 50mg/NM3 to 30mg/NM3 - except all the emissions are now said to be from the raw materials, and not the fuel at all. Under the WID they are supposed to meet the limits for VOC/TOC (Volatile Organic Carbons) and Sulphur Dioxide, but they claim "a derogation", and actually increased the emission limits fivefold from those existing before the tyre trials from 10mg/Nm3 to 50 mg/NM3.

ALL THIS PUBLIC MONEY WASTED FOR WHAT?
Years of trials - for 0.15% of particulate stack emissions?
EIGHT YEARS of sham consultations; dubious data; withheld reports; pointless public meetings; question and no-answers sessions; misleading and false information distributed; RCCF meetings where questions are asked but not answered - see RBC web site which has suddenly been transformed!; An Agency, which had helped Rugby Cement to build the plant and had just given it an (unlawful) IPC permit in 1999, but that still in 2003 could not tell the public which emissions were permitted and which were not - nor where the emissions came from! The AEAT report into "some" of the differences between tyre burning emissions and coal emissions at four cement plants; The May 2006 EA survey of what people "think" about the cement plant emissions; and now £15,000 largely from the existing health protection budget in order to choose a new Rugby Cemex Co-incinerator Forum;
An Agency which said publicly if the 60,000 people of Rugby came to the meetings and protested, they would take no notice - and which now crows that the protest has somewhat diminished.

WASTES SUBSTITUTED and MATERIALS: TYRES - 600 tonnes stored in open; CLIMAFUEL - household/commercial/industrial wastes; PETCOKE - waste from oil industry; and coal that requires emission limits to increase from TOC 10 to 50mg/Nm3.

PFA; MINESTONE; BAUXITE; OIL CRACKING SPENT CATALYST; ALUMINIUM DROSS; FOUNDRY SAND; GLASS WASTE; SILT;C EMENT BOARD SANDINGS; IRON STONE; STEEL SLAG; IRON PYRITES; TIOXIDE; FLUE GAS DE-SULPHURISATION MATERIAL; POTTERY MOLDS; AND additives such as AMMONIA and SYNTHETIC SURFACTANTS; ALKANOLAMINES; POLYALCOHOLS; SILICA DIOXIDE AND ORGANIC SURFACTANTS and SLURRY THINNERS etc etc

ONE MILLION POUNDS AIR QUALITY MONITORING?
£1 million pounds Rugby Council tax payers money squandered on poorly/wrongly sited ineffective monitoring, in order to "catch" the tyre trials' pollution

- except the trials never properly got going, and the monitoring is over; A
million pounds of ambient air monitoring "hindered" by the Environment Agency which refused to disclose pertinent pollution Dispersion models to help with the locations, and hindered by Rugby Cement which refused to give stack emissions data to the consultants Faber Maunsell and to RBC.

An Agency that does not know which way the wind blows - first in late 1999 before the plant was opened they identified a monitoring site one mile due South of the plant as the "location as close as predictable to the place where emissions from the site were predicted to be a maximum." Rugby people were forced to pay up for two years monitoring - uselessly located due south, too far away, next to a large building, and under a tree.

Then the Agency, after more (secret) dispersion modelling, decided in 2003 that this was NOT the correct location after all, and they then put a monitor one mile due north of the plant, but it appears the data is still not in the public domain; RBC paid thousands of our cash to various consultants who advised the installation of boundary site monitors; properly spaced pollution monitors and the installation of an infra-red stack camera, but all this "good advice" was paid for and simply then ignored.


PEOPLE POWER AT PADESWOOD CASTLE CEMENT:
At Padeswood a straight forward civil law process as a Group Action is underway, on behalf of local residents, who have been blighted by the newly commissioned cement/co-incinerator plant. They will be seeking a) Compensation for Loss of Amenity and b) An injunction on Castle Cement to abate the nuisances caused by their industrial activities. The injunction would have the power of the court behind it and if not complied with, would result in Castle Cement being back in court for that failure. In this action the defence of "operating within permit" is not a valid defence. A Public Nuisance offence is not available as the industry is exempt apparently - as we have found out in Rugby. But, as in Rugby, there is a clear indication of continuing blight upon their lives, properties and possessions caused by emissions of dust, noise, the giant falling plume, and odour, emanating from the cement works, over the preceeding six years.

The cement industry has been left to "Self Regulation" seemingly by dictat of DEFRA. "A lighter touch of the regulations" was a phrase allegedly wielded by government a few years ago. Then, to facilitate the cement company activities further, the 2005 revision of the Substitute Fuels Protocol for Cement and Lime Kilns was so abrasively bullied through by DEFRA and the Environment Agency, after a farce of a "public consultation", that it became clear that as far as Government was concerned, sustaining cement/industrial activity had precedence over the quality of life of local residents. Allied to that, the cement companies, probably through having an eye towards profitablity, have done absolutely as little as they feel they need to do in order control the ill effects of their industrial activities, firmly believing, it would appear, that all and any public complaints via the Environment Agency would be "smothered" in regulation and red tape, and never be anything other than "another entry on the public register of complaints." This current action is "People Power" fighting back against that unjust and improper scenario. And, the inevitable banning from corresponding and from the cement forum has also been tried at Padeswood, with a motion to expel the properly-elected member involved in the legal action - as at Rugby. Only "friends" of the cement company, and those who agree with and endorse both the Agency and the industry are welcome on the Liaison groups and Cement Community Forum!!