For your attention, from David Levy (La Farge, Recycling)

[Clevercat]

  David Levy emailed me today with the following information. David is a legend in my opinion for working hard on the behalf of our Town and the surrounding area, to keep the air as pollutant free as possible.

Dear Westbury Residents,

As Chairman of The Air That We Breathe Group you will be aware that for some twelve years my group have been actively campaigning for improvements in the cement industry. Those improvements have been forthcoming and by contacting me on 01373 832708 I am happy to inform you what has happened to improve conditions at the plant.

If however you do not wish too, be aware that regular meetings are established with both the company and the Environment Agency and that issues are raised and fully discussed and plans of action considered.

The reason for this article are strictly for you to consider. My vision has for the past two years been focused on our local government waste management policies and also on the producers of that waste, which are supermarkets via their excess packaging.

It is my prediction that we are within three years whwere we will be regulated and cost levied on our bin waste collections. In other words the more you bin the more you will pay.

If Wiltshire County Council had used its greatest asset, YOU, to sort and provide source separated waste - ie food waste for invessel composting
                           glass, steel cans, aluminium cans, for recycling
                           cardboard and paper for recycling
                           plastics (1-3 triangle logo) for recycling
                           plastics (4-7 triangle logo) for exporting
                           green waste for composting
things could have been better, but they didn't

What we got was a part story with the decisions taken to send some of our waste to an incinerator in Slough Berkshire and some of the waste to a yet to be built mechanical biological treatment plant in Westbury. As yet the contract isn't signed as nobody has seen a plant in operation.

I take issue with these choices because they do not lead to you being in control of your finances. Private Finance Initiatives will be behind any of their choices. A contract to build a £65,000,000
plant in Slough , £15,000,000 to build a MBT plant in Westbury will commit residents via their rates and wheelie bin collections to long term repayments of these choices.

The alternative is the council source separates with your help everything it can and as part of their contract negotiations with Hills our waste management operator, deliver end markets for these sorted wastes which in fact are resources. Plastics are very valuable. If you wash and sort and grade your food plastic packaging it has a value of £200 per tonne. Aluminium slightly less and Glass lower down the scale but they all have a value, even the food waste which can be used with invessel treatment and added our compost to make a high quality product.

What we get is a half hearted effort from our council with little value for money from them. They will not produce the evidence that supports their choices, because they have not done a thorough job of evaluating the options.

Our Group along with Friends of the Earth took our decision makers to Somerset where they are operating a better system because they got in on government subsidies from Defra and went for a system that would deliver more for Somerset residents.Already they are more successful in terms of what they recycle by 10% improvement.

Not convinced by our demonstration of a better system and trapped by their decisions Wiltshire doggedly sticks to its guns and has signed up to Slough. If that does not make you ashamed then this a lost cause. Slough with the M4 /M25 / Heathrow / M3 / Mars Foods / Sewerage Plant, one of the most polluted places on Gods Earth before a 400,000 tonne incinerator and we are part of this mess. Local people in Slough will pay with their healthof that there is no doubt.

The supermarket industry is slow to respond to public pressure. I have for two years been challenging managers at local supermarkets and their head offices  to colour code their plastic packaging so it helps all our residents to sort what can be recycled and what cannot. Not only that but I have questioned almost on a daily basis the volume of excess packaging that is not required.

Did you know that a toothless government has actually given YOU the people the right to challenge excess packaging via Trading Standards and also Health and Safety Executive. If you are going to be charged for your waste wheelie bins isn't it about time you tried to minimise what goes into it. Flood the system with your challenges on packaging and show them that you care, even if its only for the money.

Meanwhile our group is challenging plastics being in our wastes
It it ends up in the MBT  plant it will end up in the refuse derived fuel destined for the cement works which chemically I believe will find its way into our atmosphere and impact on the health of Westbury people. I also believe that it could impact on the cement product, but that is for Lafarge to decide.

Lafarge is a very competent company with a technical resource back up which will consider any trial results of RDF along with the Environment Agency, but already I think that our group have identified the safest and best fuel source for this industry which is sustainable and reduces the reliance on coal which is not a clean fuel either.
We believe that sewerage pellets and bone meal provide a fuel which will be the future fuel for this industry.
SAY NO TO PLASTICS AS BEING A FUEL

Incidently if plastics are removed from MBT then all you would be left with could be coped with via invessel composting which you would be hard put to spend a £million on. So why spend £15,000,000 on a redundant MBT plant?

Some thoughts for you to consider.

David Levy Chair TATWBG

[George]

Unfortunately, I think there is little hope in stopping all this crap ending up in the kilns and in our childrens lungs.



We will be paying twice over, in extra taxes, and with our health - so I have to agree with CC, about David. I hope he continues the good work....!!

I guess its nothing unusual seeing profits being the priority over health. Davids point is right, once people start to object as one voice, then perhaps something might be done.

[myangel]

i applaud david lavys tireless  hard work... i  used to live at the t op end of bremeridge road bitham park... i never had asthma until i moved in there and my son died of  his first ever asthma attack while we lived there as well... i dont think the cement works hepled to be honest... a lot of days we would get  up and our car would be COVERED adn i mean covered in a thick powder.....white .... imagine that on ur lungs w hile ur windows were open at nite
but i think that your beating ur heads against brick walls trying to do anything about things like this....  they( companies. doctors, health services) always have papers..evidance that its nothing to do with them... u cant always fight the big boys... even though you REALLY want to
good luck !!!

[LONDONER]

I fully agree shut it down if the frogs want cement send them the chalk from the quarry and let them process it themselves.
I lived in the city of London for over 10 years and did not have any chest problems, and before that lived in and around London, the smell coming from the plant is the same as we use to get in London in the 50s when we had the smog.
I've had a bad chest for the last 3 years, been in westbury for 5 years and I've got one now went to the doc on Tuesday and was put on antibiotics for a week, he agreed it was bad air in westbury, cant wait to move we are looking for an exchange, to cornwall or devon the trouble is were on an over 60 housing estate.

[Clevercat]

PLANS to build a new plant building at Lafarge's Westbury Cement Works have been submitted.

If given the go-ahead, the application will see the construction of a slurry analyser, which the company say will help make better use of raw materials and improve efficiency.

It will allow Lafarge to monitor its chalk slurry mix and make frequent small changes to the mix before it reaches the kiln.
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Westbury Works manager Jim Cross said: "Following our successful application to extend our chalk quarry the new analyser will help us to make the most of our resources.

"This is part of our on-going investment programme at Westbury which is improving the efficiency of our operations and reducing our impact on the environment."

The £250,000 analyser will be housed in a five-metre high building, situated between existing silos and holding tanks, which will screen it from view. Anyone who wants to make representations about the application should write to David Rose, the principal planning officer at Wiltshire County Council by Monday June 18.

Wilt Times

[cuthbert-murray]

Last summer i went to the bath and wesy show , and took with me a cutting of a plant i had never seen before in my garden, after showing it to the experts there i was in formed of its name and was told this plant only thrives in clean air areas as it is not found in many locations these days

[bloke]

I'm inclined to agree with you Mike, I do think that our air is a lot better here than north Bristol where I grew up (by the smell of it anyway).  Playing devil's advocate though, plant's don't have lungs so I should think they will be much less affected by particulate pollution than vertebrate animals are.

[cuthbert-murray]

its a really sticky one this one im not saying there are not health issues to do with lefarge and their activites,I was merely stating what I had been told about a particular plant by government horticultural experts, they had no idea where i had come from whatsoever.On the other hand i had lived all my life in windsor and polution is throat choking, being near to slough trading estate which is the biggest in europe the size of westbury trowbridge and warminster combined, you can't walk out your door with out the fumes of different factories churning out their waste it  really is bad there every time you leave your home you get blackheads , stinging eyes and colds all the time, and cough up blackish bile , since moving to westbury  the first thing i noticed was the clean air, this is not a slant on any one just a true picture of how bad some places can be , and I would hate to see westbury go that way

[bloke]

Me too.  I know LaFarge have the tallest chimney around here, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're not the biggest polluter by a long chalk (if you'll forgive the unintentional pun).

[Old Codger]

I have had a bad cough for a while now, but when I went to West Devon last Sunday I didn't cough at all UNTIL I got back into the Westbury area again!!
This morning the wind was blowing the smoke--they say its steam--across Westbury and some of it was coming down into the town and it was an olive colour, we will all end up with chest problems in the end!!


 

[Clevercat]

I agree, you ask the chemists or the doctors, we are in a bad place for bronchial and upper respitory complaints... I wonder why. 

Apparently the chimney was chucking out a filthy coloured smoke this morning.  Forget the filters again La Farge?

[PAT]

my daughters asma has been playing her up in the last few days

[Clevercat]

My daughter has had her umpteenth chest infec and as I have said before my middle one suffers with her sinuses as do I.  We are a healthy eating family, pretty active, but I firmly believe where we live is affecting our health.
Sadly lack of finances mean we cant go anywhere else.

[Alg]

All these plants have advanced particulate monitoring systems within their stacks and the data is recorded and will be viewed at least once a year by an external auditor to check compliance with Lafarge's PPC permit (pollution,prevention control). They will go back over the whole year and they'll see if the alarm has been triggered and how often if at all (the plant operator should then turn off the plant and investigate why the alarm went off) Too many alarms will result in the permit being withdrawn. There are set limits and they are adhered to strictly.
The environment agency also like to see the info and the Council's environmental health officer.
If you feel there are problems then take photos of any discoloured emissions and complain to the EHO. Gather evidence and show it to him/her.

Steam coming out from a chimney can get "coloured" by the sunlight and look like smoke sometimes.

[Andy]

Apparently the chimney was chucking out a filthy coloured smoke this morning.  Forget the filters again La Farge?

Yep  .

As I drove to Trowbridge at about 07.15 the trail of dirty brownish 'emission' was convecting into medium/high level cloud - the only 'cloud' in a perfect blue sky.

Then coming back to Westbury shortly after midday the now white 'emission' could be seen drifting over the town in the otherwise perfect blue sky and actually turned the sun a bit hazy as I drove along Station Road...

... on an environmental level this surely isn't right as it could affect local temperatures!

Alg ; good idea re getting photos, unfortunately my phone camera isn't good enough otherwise I'd have done so!