Residents: Cement plant has made this promise before
By Aimee
Heckel, Camera Staff Writer
March 5, 2004
LYONS — For
the last week, Richard Cargill has been able to look at the sky without
squinting through a fog of dust.
Cargill says clean air is a luxury in his neighborhood, where residents keep their windows sealed year-round, afraid of the dust that could settle on their furniture and in their lungs.
Cargill lives just east of the Lyons Cemex plant, the third-largest cement manufacturer in the world. Cemex and its neighbors have a decade long history of butting heads. Despite multiple county inspections and requests for changes throughout the years, residents said little has changed — until complaints and inspections recently escalated.
On Feb. 28, after discovering multiple clean-air violations in a series of unannounced inspections, the state fined Cemex $282,000 and required "significant" health and environmental changes.
Since then, Cemex has been quiet, the county's health department said. The street sweepers and water trucks are steadily buzzing to pacify the dust related to cement production. The former dust plume, immortalized in residents' countless photos, has settled.
"They have it under control," Cargill said. "But we've seen that before."
In 2001, residents and Cemex signed a "memorandum of understanding" outlining steps Cemex would take to become a better neighbor. Cemex agreed to spend $300,000 on sprinkler systems, a water truck, a street sweeper and an additional environmental employee.
The air was clean for about three months, Cargill said.
Then, residents said the dreaded dust plume began swelling again. Residents shot the county another 25 complaints. The state got involved, and the recently released consent decree legitimized the neighbors' concerns.
According to the degree, inspectors found "excessive fugitive dust emissions" and a defective sprinkler system. Inspectors said Cemex officials had improperly documented air pollution and lied about having some pollution-control equipment.
Of the $282,000 in state fines, $149,000 must go into a project outlining improvements to environmental and public health.
Now with Cemex under a microscope, residents hope the recent improvements will be long-term.
"We've always asked — for a decade — for a clean plant to be a good neighbor. I think the fines may give us a good start on that," Cargill said.
Resident Anne George said she has heard enough of Cemex's "rhetoric" about how it cares about the community and its workers.
"I'd like that whole place to cease operations until we are all safe," she said.
Cemex officials did not return calls Thursday.
Contact Aimee Heckel at (303) 473-1359 or heckela@dailycamera.com.