November 30, 2006

By Lauren Heaton

Since last year the CEMEX Fairborn Cement Plant on Dayton-Yellow Springs Road has been in the process of applying for a permit to begin using tires as a partial fuel source for its cement kilns. While some believe using discarded tires as a fuel source is a threat to public health and the environment, others, including the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, take the position that tire derived fuel (TDF) provides a use for tires that would otherwise be considered hazardous waste.

To burn tires, the company must first obtain a 60-day exemption to its current Title V operating permit to conduct a trial burn using different combinations of petroleum coke, coal, and TDF. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency is waiting for more details from CEMEX before issuing the permit exemption, but according to Jenny Marsee, an abatement unit supervisor with the Regional Air Pollution Control Agency (RAPCA), a division of the Ohio EPA, CEMEX is in compliance with all of its regulations and could begin a trial burn as soon as it establishes an acceptable method of burning tires and monitoring emissions.

CEMEX has asked to replace up to 30 percent of its current fuel with TDF, which would allow the plant to burn what CEMEX Environmental Manager Mike Henry estimates would likely be about 25 percent TDF mixed with either petroleum coke or coal. If CEMEX is permitted to burn tires and begins doing so, the formula would mean CEMEX could burn a maximum of six tires a minute, or 8,640 each day. Because of transportation costs, Henry said, the tires would likely be local, trucked in weekly on semitrailers.

The company projects that it will conduct its first tire-burning test at the beginning of the summer, Henry said.

If CEMEX is permitted to burn tires, ODNR will grant the company $350,000 to rid Ohio of over one million discarded tires, Henry said. It is a onetime grant that the company would use to purchase equipment needed to start adding tires to its fuel mixture, he said.

According to the Ohio EPA Web site, tires burn cleaner and cheaper than coal. One pound of tires equals 12,000 to 16,000 British thermal units (BTUs), an energy value equal to oil and 25 percent higher than coal.

Dawn Falleur, chair of the Green Environmental Coalition, is less enthusiastic about burning tires at a plant whose smokestack she can see from her front yard in Greene Country Club Village. She doubts the corporate responsibility at CEMEX because she has seen the company commit too many emissions violations, reported and unreported, she said in a recent interview.

In March 2005, according to a letter from the U.S. EPA copied to the Green Environmental Coalition, CEMEX was in violation of several sections of the Clean Air Act because of above-standard emissions. Between January and June that year, according to a violation warning letter from RAPCA also copied to the environmental group, CEMEX failed to report kiln temperature deviations in its quarterly reports, which is a violation of its Title V operating permit. And in July 2006, RAPCA issued another warning that CEMEX had installed a new kiln access door in March without the proper U.S. EPA permit, in anticipation of running a tire trial burn.

Although Marsee clearly stated last month that CEMEX had adequately responded to all of RAPCA’s warning and violation letters, Falleur said the community must demand to know what the company is putting into the air at all times and to hold CEMEX accountable for its actions.

“It’s not a proven science that you can burn tires safely,” she said. “There’s a cost to the community being downwind of a tire incinerator.”

Other Yellow Springs neighbors are also skeptical about CEMEX’s plans to burn tires at its kiln. Aimee Maruyama, a member of Parents Against Burning Tires, has joined with Falleur to help organize a nationwide alliance of citizens and environmental groups to demand that all six U.S. CEMEX plants abide by federal, state and regional regulations and that they be good corporate neighbors and conform to the standards of their local communities. CEMEX plants in Boulder, Colo., Los Angeles, Calif., East Manatee County, Fla., Charlevoix, Mich., and Doña Ana and Otero counties in New Mexico have been cited numerous times for violating federal and state air quality control standards, according to the alliance’s active members in Ohio, Colorado, California, Florida and Michigan.

CEMEX applied for and was granted a permit to burn tire-derived fuel in the mid-1990s but withdrew its request because “it wasn’t economical to do it then,” Henry said. Since then, however, the cost of coal has doubled and the cost of petroleum coke has tripled, he said, and with the state’s incentives, tires have become “economically attractive,” he said.

RAPCA has received only one other request in Greene County in the last five years from a paper company to use tires as a fuel source, and according to Marsee, the company would have received the permit to burn if it had been pursued. Earlier this year, the U.S. EPA issued a permit to Lafarge Building Materials, Inc., a cement manufacturer in Revena, N.Y., to burn up to 20 percent tire-derived fuel, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Web site.

The permit was issued after a group of over 300 citizens and environmental activists from nearby universities and nonprofit groups voiced concerns about tire burning causing an increase in cadmium, zinc, mercury, lead, arsenic, dioxins, PCBs, benzene, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds in the air, which, in amounts in excess of the national emission standards for hazardous air pollutants, are known to cause cancer, asthma, arthritis and damage to the nervous system. According to that department’s Web site, it completed Air Guide 1 and EPA ISCLT2 analyses to assess the public health risk from inhalation of ambient air toxins during the trial burn and found that emissions were under 10 percent of the acceptable levels.

Henry said last week that he meets with the Green Environmental Coalition every three months and wants the community to be involved in helping CEMEX Fairborn establish a protocol for the tire-burning test. Henry also said the company plans to install a continuous emissions monitor to test for carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide compounds, hydrocarbons and sodium dioxide once tires are added as a fuel. Henry is also available to give tours of the Fairborn plant to those who want to know more about CEMEX operations. He can be reached at 879-8467.

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com