WARWICKSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL CEMEX RUGBY WAR RAGES ON

RBC PREDICTS ENVIRONMENTAL CALAMITY

SOUTHAM AND RUGBY BATTLE IT OUT!

WHICH will draw the CEMEX short straw, and have the 500,000 tonne a year WASTE PLANT and all its EMISSIONS and LORRIES dumped on them. Cemex has made two applications, at Rugby and at Southam, in a bid to turn 500,000 tpa household, commercial and industrial waste into 250,000 tpa into CHEAP Refuse Derived Fuel - friendly name "CLIMAFUEL." Meanwhile the WARWICKSHIRE WASTE PARTNERSHIP enters into agreements to burn most of Warwickshire's waste in Coventry's enlarged incinerator, leaving bemused bystanders to wonder where ALL this waste will come from? Rugby has beaten its 50% re-cycling target, so why are we being penalised for that?


SAFETY FEARS OVER WASTE PLANT!

SIGNIFICANT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT UNREALISTIC!

PROTECTION OF RUGBY RESIDENTS IS NOT GUARANTEED! as Rugby Advertiser front page 13 August says : Rugby Councillors "hotly contest" and "DAMN the controversial Cemex plans" and tell WCC that "THIS SITE IS NOT SUITABLE" and that Rugby residents are already suffering air quality and pollution problems, and the town is blighted more than enough with the BLOT! The local residents, who live down wind of the monstrous CO-INCINERATOR, in deprived wards, and in areas of MULTIPLE DEPRIVATION, fear a repetition of the CORBY CALAMITY, and now understand that the so-called by the Environment Agency's "ONLY nuisance dust", is actually toxic, and hazardous, and causes health effects.

CEMEX SAYS:

"In addition to the original 2,000 pages of text, analysis, diagrams, and maps we have just submitted a further 500 pages of information as requested. This covered the chimney height, now having reduced the dispersion from 91 metres high to 35 metres - only 14 metres above the building - and information on air quality, groundwater and traffic, and we find it difficult to understand why the Rugby Council feels it needs more information."

12 August the RBC Planning Committee threw it out and dared WCC to go ahead with it in Rugby now!

WARWICKSHIRE TELEGRAPH:

VILLAGE FURY AT WASTE DECISION.
CEMEX WASTE PLANT NOT TO BE BUILT!
14 August Mary Griffins reports : "Villagers feel like second class citizens after RBC opposed the waste plant in Rugby but approved it in the countryside. Long Itchington, Marton and Princethorpe residents fear being bombarded with lorries." (Rugby already has about 1,000 Cemex HGVs each day in the AIR QUALITY MANAGEMENT AREA caused by Nitrogen dioxide emissions from lorries and from Cemex co-incinerator.) Traffic will come from all directions, and although we appreciate it is far too close to homes in Rugby, leading to pollution, air quality, odour, amenity and other environmental disasters and FUNDAMENTALLY IT SHOULD NOT BE BUILT AT ALL!

STEWART DAVIES SERCO :

SERCO is to lead the LONDON 6,000 BIKE HIRE as the mayor grants the contract to Serco, with no room for OYSTER.
The 6,000 bikes will be based in nine London Boroughs. Stewart Davies makes good again as Corby and Rugby lick their wounds.


RETROSPECTIVE PLANNING PERMISSIONS
Warwickshire County Council breaks all records for the most number of unlawful planning permissions granted to a company! RUGBY CEMENT virtually always builds first, without applying, knowing that the tame planners and Councillors at WCC will simply nod it through as usual - without any proper public consultation, any environmental impact assessment, and in breach of the EU and UK laws on EIA and Public Participation.

Indeed this is how the cement plant was built - unlawfully!
And operated by the Environment Agency - unlawfully! And became a CO-INCINERATOR - unlawfully!
THANKS are due to WCC!!

Often the councillors break their own constitution, and attend site visits "in secret" BEFORE the application is even heard in Committee in a blatant effort to outwit the public who are affected. WCC have dug themselves into a fine corner this time. The government position on this is apparently in PPG 18, issued in 1991 and long outdated and superseded by other laws. PPG says they can go on building and building and getting retrospective permissions as much as they want - an the worst thing that may happen to them IF the Local Planning Authority were to pluck up courage and to tell them to "STOP! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!" would be a maximum slap-on-the-wrist £20,000 fine. Peanuts!

CEMEX TOLD "NO!"

RUGBY COUNCIL SAYS..

"ENOUGH! CO-INCINERATOR IS ALREADY TOO MUCH!"

RUGBY BOROUGH COUNCIL recognises the increase in toxic air pollution in Rugby and the very real threat now facing local residents, and dedicates about 50 pages on the www.rugby.gov.uk web site in the Committee report to the the planning committee on Wednesday 12 August. It says to turn down the Cemex application for a 500,000 tpa waste plant to manufacture RDF to feed the monster CO-INCINERATOR.
RBC cite many reasons, including the EXISTING POLLUTION FROM THE CEMEX CO-INCINERATOR, and the LACK of any proper air quality assessment (PM2.5 particles ignored) and the FAILURE TO CONSIDER THE HEALTH IMPACT
of the CURRENT OPERATIONS and CUMULATIVE IMPACT.
Seems RBC have been reading my many emails on the subject after all!

DUST FALL OUT NOT OUR FAULT! says CEMEX CEMENT in Rugby Advertiser 6 August. " The overnight dust fall out was not our fault!" as dust rains down, yet again, on Long Lawford,. Townsend Lane residents contacted the Advertiser (yet AGAIN!!!) to report a Monday morning fall-out. The Environment Agency is looking into it, and Cemex also takes samples for analysis. Apparently the co-incinerator's own (very limited, Mickey Mouse) monitoring, according to Cemex, "did not record any problems at that time, and we also had a report of a bonfire in the area, and we will know the outcome in about three days". And the wind, as ever, reported today on Radio Rugby, was blowing in completely the wrong direction!! In June 2009 Cemex was fined a paltry maximum £20,000 at the Stratford Magistrates Court, after the Environment Agency spent no less than TWENTY SEVEN MONTHS "thinking" about it". Then there were THREE very discrete/secret/unpublicised hearings in Rugby), before Judge Sanders, made a judgement, "under the impression" , as created by Cemex, its consultants AMANDA GAIR and the Environment Agency and its EXPERT Professor Roy Harrison of Birmingham University/ Health Protection Agency, that "that 8.67 tonnes of pulverised coal dust was not proven to be harmful to health of the Rugby residents up to three miles away who were covered in black oily dust and particles."

Some might even say 8 tonnes of coal dust is GOOD FOR US!! No weaklings in Rugby - we are the supermen!

RUGBY OBSERVER LETTER:
LONG LAWFORD: "Last week the citizens of CORBY won a landmark case against their local council. To the horror of the community they witnessed a rapid rise in the level of local birth defects, and after what would appear to be insurmountable odds finally managed to prove the negligence of the authorities in failing to protect them from high levels of fugitive metal particulates covering the town during the demolition of the local steel works.

Compare this outcome with the situation in RUGBY, and it is difficult not to believe that our town must now be at a moral crossroads. Do we continue to allow regular illegal clouds of fugitive, potentially dangerous levels of dust to cover our community, with all the obvious health concerns for the elderly, young and weak residents of the borough? Do we continue to stand aside and watch the ever expanding business interests of one company blight our skyline and change the surrounding area into a massive, polluted moonscape? In this modern world of environmental awareness, why do we allow our community to be slowly poisoned and destroyed by one company’s voracious appetite for profit?The people of Corby stood up to be counted, they questioned the ability of the very people who were elected to protect the community, and found them wanting.

In a well attended public speech to RUGBY residents at St Oswalds Church last week Professor Paul Connett criticised amongst many other practices, the lack of credible monitoring for Dioxins and Mercury, both known carcinogenics at this local plant, and the almost obscene level of ‘averaging out’ of all chemical release figures before publication. When combined with a bizarrely high safe limit level requested by the Environment Agency for these emissions (as if there is a safe level for this poisonous stew) one wonders why we have stood aside for so long already.

CORBY had the courage to react when their community was at threat; the people of Rugby need to reach the same level of concern before it is too late."

CORBY DUST IS BLAMED!
AIR QUALITY SPECIALIST MAGAZINE : " The High Court decided that toxic hazardous dust kicked up by disturbing contaminated hazardous landfills from the closed Corus Steel works could have caused birth defects." "The Judgement will have implications elsewhere - for instance protesters in Rugby claim the cement (CO-INCINERATOR) works and associated traffic leads to excess toxic dust in the town. Likewise waste management sites that are known to cause air quality problems because of deposited dust and windblown dust should NOW be REASSESSED, not just for "nuisance", but also for potential toxicological effects."

PLAY "I SPY!"

STEWART DAVIES stood in Peterborough council elections in 2002 for Lib Dems. This Cambridge graduate was at first in 1986 with ICI; then was MD at Corus Steel; then founder of Corby Urban Regeneration; then moved over to cause mayhem as MD of Rugby Cement; then CEMEX; then SERCO: and 2001 Climate Change Agreement; EU Trading; Sustainable Cement initiative, and now highly favoured Commissioner for the Environment - appointed by HILARY BENN for a second three year term.

SPOT CEMEX POLICE BIKE: word on the street has it that this "widely publicised and much acclaimed and world-wide well-reported generously donated bike" has been stolen and auctioned on ebay, for a fraction of the £1,000 Cemex paid to Warwickshire Police to purchase/sponsor this environmentally sound piece of kit. Environmental groups have asked under the FREEDOM of INFORMATION ACT how many other such "donations Warwicks Police have received from industry?"