TXI to keep Midlothian wet cement kilns closed

[July 07, 2010]  DALLAS (AP) -- Texas Industries announced Tuesday that it will close all four of its wet-process cement kilns in Midlothian permanently, handing a victory to grass-roots opponents who had waged a lengthy fight over downwind pollution from the plants.

The TXI plant in Midlothian, 25 miles southwest of Dallas, is part of the nation's greatest concentration of cement plants.

The Dallas-based construction materials company said in a statement that, henceforth, it would rely on the plant's dry-process kiln that the citizen activists agree burns cleaner and uses more up-to-date technology.

"It's the culmination of a 21-year fight that began in 1989 by a group of residents who found that burning hazardous waste in cement kilns was not a good idea," said Jim Schermbeck, director of the group Downwinders at Risk.

TXI called the closings "an opportunity to enhance the operational efficiency of TXI's modern (dry-process) kiln at the same plant," as well as "result in reduced emissions."

The company said the move will have no effect on the present force of 170 workers at the plant.

The decision does not call for demolition of the four wet kilns, which had been idled since 2008 by a construction market shrunken by the economic recession, said TXI spokesman David Perkins. However, upgrades to the 50-year-old units would be impractical, he said.

As for future demolition, "obviously that will be a consideration," Perkins said.

Aside from TXI's dry-process kiln, the move leaves two dry-process cement kilns run in Midlothian by Waltham, Mass.-based Holcim (US) Inc. and three wet-process cement kilns run by Overland Park, Kan.-based Ash Grove Cement Co. Schermbeck said the cement kiln fight would now focus on the Ash Grove kilns.

In a statement issued late Tuesday, Curtis Lesslie, Ash Grove vice president for environmental affairs, defended the cleanliness of its Midlothian wet kilns. He said Ash Grove operates the nation's only wet kilns that feature up-to-date pollution control technology "and other methods to reduce overall emissions by more than 65 percent since the 1990s."

State, local or industry officials had long said decades of studies prove the air around the nation's largest concentration of cement plants is just fine. Residents, however, have reported a list of health woes they have attributed to air pollution from the plants.

In Midlothian, the plants are tightly clustered a few miles apart in this town of about 16,000 just south of Dallas. The factories, with 10 massive kilns that bake limestone and other ingredients into cement at temperatures up to 2,800 degrees, can produce up to 6 million tons of cement a year by a pollution-producing process fueled mostly by coal, hazardous waste or old tires.

According to the most recent EPA statistics, the plants in 2007 emitted about 300 tons of sulfuric acid, nearly 20 tons of benzene, and smaller amounts of mercury, chromium, manganese and other chemicals. Those emissions were within the annual limits allowed on their state emissions permits.

The announcement came six days after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officially overturned a 16-year-old Texas air permitting program it says violates the Clean Air Act. However, Perkins said that was not a factor in TXI's decision

[Associated Press; By TERRY WALLACE]

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