Checkered past of Cemex
Company that wants to mine in SCV has numerous EPA violations
Cemex broke environmental laws at more than 40 of its mining operations across the country during the last three years, and 13 of those violations have not yet been corrected, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The company that proposes to locate a 56 million ton sand and gravel mine in the Santa Clarita Valley has plants operating in violation of EPA regulations in Puerto Rico, Texas, Colorado, Arizona and Kentucky.
Five of those plants are deemed to have “significant” unresolved violations, including three plants in Puerto Rico and one plant each in Colorado and Texas, EPA spokeswoman Julia Valentine said pointing to the agency’s list of violations posted on its website.
Each of the 13 violations for failing to comply with the EPA’s air quality regulations resulted in the agency taking enforcement action: fining the company and ordering it to fix the problem.
“The Cemex companies in the U.S. operate in many states in highly regulated industries,” Cemex spokeswoman Sara Bouffard said when asked about the EPA’s list of violations.
“These operations include hundreds of readymix plants, nearly 100 quarries and several cement plants,” she said. “All of
these operations diligently work to fully comply with all regulations.
“In the event we do not meet these expectations, we quickly work to identify and resolve the issue and prevent recurrences,” she said. “The referenced (EPA) list does not show the many successes and innovations Cemex has in environmental stewardship.”
Cemex holds two contracts issued in 1990 by the Bureau of Land Management to extract 56 million tons of sand and gravel from hundreds of acres in Soledad Canyon on the outskirts of Canyon Country.
But in March 2015 the BLM rescinded those contracts, saying the Mexicobased firm had waited too long to act on them. Cemex appealed the bureau’s decision in September and, if it wins the appeal, it could begin mining as early as late next year.
The city of Santa Clarita has long battled the mine, saying it would clog the Highway 14 freeway with truck traffic and reduce quality of life in the Santa Clarita Valley.
But its most vehement objection has revolved around the compromised air quality officials believe would result from the proposed mine operation.
The American Lung Association issued a State of the Air 2016 report Wednesday that noted Los Angeles remains the nation’s leader in harmful ozone pollution.
Many of the unresolved violations issued against Cemex operations involve compromised air quality. One example is the Lyons, Colorado, mine.
Lyons mine
Cemex Construction Materials South LLC in Lyons, Colorado, shares many similarities with the mine site proposed for the Santa Clarita Valley.
It sits in a relatively remote, hilly area about 10 miles north of Boulder, Colorado, on Highway 66 near the small town of Lyons, population 2,033.
The Soledad Canyon site sits about 10 miles northeast of Santa Clarita on Highway 14 near the small town of Acton, population 3,042.
In Lyons the highway runs alongside the St. Vrain Creek. In the Santa Clarita Valley, the highway runs alongside the Santa Clara River.
According to the EPA, the Lyons facility faces “significant violations” and has had three formal enforcement actions filed against it by the agency.
The agency notes Cemex has been in significant violation of EPA air quality standards for the last three years.
Some of the violations include:
Failing to undergo PSD BACT analysis, which means failing to determine particular air pollutants with the best available control technology.
Failing to install and operate the best available control technology for the control of nitrogen oxides, a family of poisonous, highly reactive gases.
Failing to demonstrate that allowable increases of emissions wouldn’t contribute to air pollution.
Failing to provide for review and public comment on the air quality impacts of any modifications made to the plant.
“This is a facility with an enforcement history,” said Christopher Dann, spokesman for the Air Pollution Control Division of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment in Boulder.
History
Charlie Brennan, environmental reporter for the Boulder Daily Camera newspaper, said he first wrote about the Lyons mine for the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News as far back as the 1980s.
“It was in the news with some frequency due to the issue of air pollution and pollution concerns,” Brennan said during an interview with The Signal earlier this month.
“Noise pollution was a part of (residents’ complaints) — water pollution of the St. Vrain Creek as well.
“In fact, there was a problem with all three components” — air, noise and water pollution, he said.
Citizen concerns about air pollution have spanned three decades since Brennan’s early stories.
Lawsuits
By 2009, Lyons residents took to the streets, activists filed lawsuits — as did the EPA — each concerned person or agency taking Cemex to task over air pollution.
“I have friends who, four or five years ago, all went marching down to Cemex to protest,” said Carrie Gonzalez, who runs the Honey & More Store about a half mile from the Cemex plant.
“The people of Lyons took issue with Cemex,” she said.
One of those people was Jeremy Nicols, spokesman for an environmental watchdog group called WildEarth Guardians, which eventually sued Cemex over air pollution.
“Cemex has quite a history here,” Nicols said in a phone interview Monday.
Colorado residents began noticing Cemex in 2006, he said, when the company began burning tires in its kiln as part of a now-rescinded state program to recycle tires, he said.
“We learned suddenly that we have a dirty cement plant,” he said. “One of the big problems was that they were constantly violating air pollution permits.”
“They would increase production and never get a new permit,” Nicols said. “The cement industry is a dirty business, but Cemex took it to a new extreme.”
Community concern continued to mount over air pollution, intensifying in 2009 when the EPA sued the company, a move Nicols’ group applauded.
Penalties
Finally, in April 2013, the EPA and the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Cemex Inc. had agreed to operate advanced pollution controls on its kiln and pay a $1 million civil penalty to resolve alleged violations of the Clean Air Act.
The company paid $1 million in federal penalties, according to the government’s last inspection in September 2015.
Since that agreement was reached, Cemex has continued to operate out of compliance with EPA standards with “significant violations” of air quality standards, including violations of the National Emission Standard For Hazardous Air Pollutant, according to the EPA.
During the past five years of operation at the Lyons mine, RPA officials said, the company has paid compliance action costs totaling at least $3.6 million.