GENERAL41634 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

~. Dust in the wind Cement plant north of Boulder faces state penalties, federal inspectors and the wrath of a whistleblower by Pamela Whlte (Editorial@bouldenveekly.com) Making cement is a dirty business. It involves a series of complicated steps that take raw stone from quarries and transform it into a very fine powder that attains remarkable qualities when mixed with water. Without cement, the primary ingredient in concrete, modern architecture and transportation could not exist. But the manufacture of cement produces a host of pollutants. Most cement plants burn coal for fuel, releasing toxins and particulate pollutants into the atmosphere. In addition, the heavy industrial machinery needed to create cement requires vast amounts of ail for lubrication. Then there's the ever-present dust byproducts-rock dust, clinker dust, cement kiln dust and powdered cement itself. Since 1969, cement has been manufactured at the cement plant located just outside Lyons. Currently owned by Cemex, a Mexican company with net sales of $6.6 billion last year and the largest manufacturer of cement in North America, the plant supplies about 25 percent of Colorado's demand for cement and employs some 100 people year round. While its product might be in demand and its contributions to the local economy valuable, the plant is less than popular with people who live nearby. For six years, Cemex has been the source of complaints from neighbors who say fugitive dust plumes from the plant have invaded their homes, ruined the paint jobs on their cars and left them ill. While neighbors have complained to the EPA, the state and the county, they say precious little has been done to address the alleged problems at Cemex. Further, the neighbors say that officials have at times treated them as annoyances, with one county official referring to them as NIMBYs-complainers whose unhappiness can best be explained by the phrase, "Not In My Back Yard." But the wind may be shifting. In March, a state inspector responded to county government concerns by launching a series of unannounced inspections at Cemex. The inspections netted a host of alleged air-quality-control violations, a number of which are directly related to fugitive dust. The state's enforcement effort received an unexpected boost when a Cemex employee, frustrated by the company's alleged inattention to employee concerns, began to feed information to the health department, including three hours of video footage filmed inside the plant in July and August.