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"If our experience is similar to that of other plants, we expect it will be very successful," says Lohr. "To the extent that we can reduce our consumption rate, we can extend our resources." The Lyons plant is not necessarily new to the tire-burning business. It regularly burned tires in its kiln from 1989 to 1992. When Cemex announced in 2002 it would reinstate the practice, residents argued that they no longer had the correct permit. According to curcent county zoning laws, county permits lapse if they are not used in a five-year period. Since tires had not been burned at Cemex for more than five years, residents argued, they no longer had the right to do so. But the county land use department gave the go-ahead to Cemex's proposal-a move that led some critics to suggest that Cemex had greased the officials' wheels by donating open space land to the county. "Our feeling is, if they shut down the plant, they would have to re-apply for a special work permit," says county spokesman Jim Burrus. "What they decide to burn in the making of the product is immaterial to the special-use permit" In the fall of 2002, Sierra Club sued the county land use department on the permit issue. The case has yet to be decided, stalling Cemex's tire-burning plans. If local residents and environmentalists have it their way, tires will never again be burned in Cemex's kilns. "They are trying to pass off this dinosaur as a safe combustion device to burn tires. And it's physically impossible," says Ken Dobbs, local resident and member of the Environmental Justice Project. "Tires are toxic when they are burned, and they release tons of very hazardous chemicals to the environment." Tire-burning proponents says cement kilns are often 100 times more efficient than the standards required for waste incinerators required by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But skeptics say a kiln is very different than an incinerator. Kilns like Cemex's use a 100-year-old technology called a bag house-a room filled with fabric bags-to block emissions from leaving the facility. While bag houses are reasonably effective for coal burning, critics say they are not designed for fire burning. And while a 1997 EPA report concluded that burning tires produced emissions similar to coal combustion, their tests were conducted in a highly controlled environments, not in fluctuating temperatures like those found in cement kilns. Even in perfect conditions, some aren't convinced burning tires is safe, pointing to a lack of consistent scientific evidence on the subject. After a 2002 scrap-tire test burn in Cemex's Lyons kiln, county and federal officials declared the process posed no serious local health hazards. But residents weren't convinced. They pointed out that a quarter of the test's raw data was thrown out, due to unusually high acetone levels. But county officials say the missing results were from the coal-burning portion of the test and not part of the tire-burning test and are therefore irrelevant. And while all were still within EPA limits, neighbors were also concerned by increased levels of toxins like benzene, mercury, arsenic, zinc and lead. "The list just goes on and on," says Dobbs. "This is not just the little St. Vrain Valley. It's been proven that these toxic plumes can travel as much as 47 miles in radius." 17