Firm seeks permanent OK to burn tires
Lafarge Brookfield is committed to keeping the home tires burning.
“Based on the results we're seeing, we anticipate we will be applying for permanent approval to use scrap tires to reduce our carbon and NOX (nitrogen oxides) emissions from the plant going forward,” said Rob Cumming, environmental director at Lafarge Canada.
The company applied for and was granted a controversial one-year pilot project in 2017 to burn some 400,000 discarded vehicle tires in its now 55-yearold plant located in Pleasant Valley, about four kilometres from Brookfield.
It took some time to get the pilot project up and running and it ran its course by September 2019.
A spokeswoman with the provincial Environment Department said Lafarge submitted a variance request for approval to extend its tireburning until Oct. 10, 2021, and it was granted by the department in August of this year.
“The company must limit tire-derived fuel to a maximum of 20 tonnes or 15 per cent of the total daily fuel consumption, and the company must conduct source testing while using tires as supplementary fuel,” Barbara Maclean said in an email.
Cumming said the company is using the extension as an opportunity to do additional testing.
“We anticipate in the spring we will be presenting the results from all the testing to the public,” said Cumming, adding that the company can't offer a more specific timeline because of COVID considerations.
At that time, the company will apply for permanent approval.
“One of our long-term goals is reducing our carbon emissions in our cement production at all our plants around the globe,” Cumming said. “One of the best ways to do that is to replace coal or petcoke with lower-carbon alternatives.”
He said every tonne of coal fuel replaced amounts to a 30 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Cumming said the company uses the entirety of the tires it burns or that it basically disintegrates in milliseconds in a flue gas temperature of thousands of degrees Celsius, about a quarter of the temperature of the sun's surface. The steel and silica, the bonding agent in a tire, from the steel belts add a source of iron for the process that's used in the final cement product.
“We're very delighted with how well it's been going,” Cumming said. “The plant team started using those scrap tires without hardly even a blink.”
There were plenty of blinks outside the plant in the early going.
A citizens group from the area vehemently opposed the project, saying the kiln-burnt tires would disperse carcinogenic dioxins and furans into the air as far as 100 kilometres from the plant.
Lydia Sorflaten, who lives with her husband in Shortts Lake less than a kilometre from the plant, said at a 2017 meeting that old cement kilns are not meant to burn tires.
“Just because you can't see 'em doesn't mean they are not there,” Sorflaten said of dioxins and furans.
The group launched a Nova Scotia Supreme Court challenge, arguing that the July 2017 decision by then-environment minister Iain Rankin to approve the pilot project didn't properly assess the impact of plant emissions. The court challenge was eventually dismissed by Justice James Chipman.
Reached recently, Sorflaten said she has to live with something she doesn't much like.
“We are living and enjoying life and just ignoring the whole thing,” Sorflaten said. “What you can't do something about in life, you are best to leave. That's the way it is.
“If we were in a different part of the country, there would be controls but we're not. They are allowed to leave their stack open to the wind.
“We hope it just blows over the top of us.”
Something didn't blow over the top of them on Sept. 14 of this year, when a deposit of cement kiln dust from what the company called an opacity incident descended on those living near the plant.
“The company followed the terms of their approval and the situation was rectified immediately,” Maclean said on behalf of the Environment Department.
Both Maclean and Cumming said the release of kiln dust was not related to the tireburning project but was due to an electronic failure.
“They admitted it was an upset, a major malfunction,” Sorflaten said. “We live with it.”
Cumming said the plant, which employs about 90 people, installed continuous emission monitors at a cost of more than $500,000 three years ago and actual emission testing is done by Air Testing Services Inc., of St. Margarets Bay.
Cumming calls the move to burn car and light-truck tires a success.
“We're going to optimize those emission reductions and it's making Brookfield a much more environmentally sustainable plant,” he said.
“At the same time, we are able to provide a service to the province and our other communities around the world where we do this. We are able to make good use, very efficient and environmentally beneficial use of scrap tires.”
That process, too, has met with criticism from consumers who say they pay an environmental fee on new tires that is then passed along as a subsidy to pay Lafarge to burn the tires when discarded.
There are about a million tires discarded every year in the province. Divert Nova Scotia, a not-for-profit corporation, picks up the $4.50-per-tire environmental fee that Nova Scotia consumers pay at retail outlets.
Through its tire management program, Divert had at one time paid a $200 per tonne fee to C&D Recycling in Goodwood for taking the discarded tires and shredding them into tire-derived aggregate that can be used for highways, retaining walls, drainage, foundation backfilling and other products.
Lafarge's pilot project bid landed the cement company almost 40 per cent of the province's discarded tires, more than 350,000 tires a year, over a fiveyear period.
The company is paid $105 per tonne by Divert to take the tires.