Rugby Cement tyre-burning trial halted by Environment Agency

The Agency said an incident occurred on the morning of Monday June 21 which meant the plant was emitting particulate matter above the permitted levels for almost three hours.

The trial to replace a proportion of fossil fuels used in the Rugby cement kiln with waste tyres began in May 2004 (see letsrecycle.com story). The start of the trial had been delayed by a month because of Agency concerns about the plant not operating to an optimum standard.

But after the incident on June 21, the Agency has halted the trial. Revealing the reasons behind the decision today, the Agency's environment manager Dr David Hudson explained: “An incident happened on the morning of Monday 21 June 2004 during the night shift that has led the Environment Agency to conclude that the trial must be suspended at this time.”

He continued: “It is likely that no member of the public will have noticed anything, but the continuous monitoring equipment shows that the plant ran above the permitted level for particulate matter for nearly three hours. It is currently understood that there was a fault with the plant’s electrostatic precipitator.

“After the problem arose the plant continued to burn chipped tyres but this is specifically forbidden by our permit conditions,” Dr Hudson added.

Investigation

An investigation is underway and Rugby Cement has now sent the Agency sufficient details for it to make the decision to suspend the trial. The Agency will be contacting the members of the local community group, the Rugby Cement Forum, shortly with an update on the situation.

Dr Hudson said: “Whilst the incident itself was probably not of major environmental significance, management failures are unacceptable. The company needs to gain the trust of the local community and failures like this do not help to build such trust.”

The Agency has served a notice requiring new operating procedures to be developed and put in place before the trial can resume. The notice also requires further reports from the company on the incident. Continuation of the trial will be reviewed if these indicate that tyre burning caused the particulate level breach.

The Agency said it will be considering what further action may be taken for breaches of the permit conditions in line with its enforcement and prosecution policy.

Rugby Cement's general manager, Bob Millard said he was “disappointed” that the Agency has decided to stop the trial, but that the company would be working with the Agency to restart the trial as soon as possible.