Picture 1After two public hearings, each lasting more than three hours, the City of Albuquerque’s Air Quality Division seems likely to approve a permit application that would allow a cement transfer station to operate 24 hours a day in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

At the most recent hearing Wednesday night, neighbors spoke emotionally, at times angrily, at times choking back tears, about what it’s like to live in the shadow of a cement transfer station that they say clogs their swamp coolers and covers their cars and plants with dust. Many fear the cement dust released by the facility has an adverse affect on their health. And they worry that the dust, traffic and noise will lower their property values.

But representatives from the Air Quality Division said that very few permit applications are rejected. There are three options, Division Director Israel Tavarez said: deny the application, approve it or approve it with additional qualifications.

Residents who attended the hearing seemed to challenge the Air Quality Division to be tougher with American Cement, which was bought by Grupo Cementos Chihuahua (GCC) in 2008.

“You guys are public servants! You work for us!” said Thomas Cruz, his body turned to face a table at which employees from the Air Quality Division sat stoically. “And we want you to monitor this. Everybody in this room knows that this plant pollutes… And we want you to prove it.”

After the first hearing, at which the cement company spent over an hour giving a presentation with charts and graphs, the residents came armed with their own multimedia tools.

Nasser Safaei, president of the Stronghurst Neighborhood Association, showed a photograph of an Indian woman sorting through scraps of toxic asbestos. Indian government officials, he said, were supposed to be regulating asbestos, but instead they turned their backs out of corruption, ignorance or apathy.

“It is not our responsibility to be here telling you something is wrong with this plant,” Safaei said. “So which of the three applies to you? Corruption, ignorance or apathy? If none, prove me right… and this application will be denied.”

Safaei also challenged the computer modeling that the Air Quality Division uses to determine how much pollution the facility would emit if it were to operate 24 hours a day. Jeff Stonesifer, a meteorologist with the division, admitted that the computer models did not take into account incidents when environmental protections, such as filters, failed.

“The model assumes that the company is following permit conditions. The video that we saw, with ash and cement coming out of the silo, that is not what’s assumed in this model. That would be a violation as I understand it,” Stonesifer said.

At the first part of the hearing, held in June, the company detailed some improvements that had been made to try to address neighbors’ concerns — including improved filters. But audience members made clear Wednesday night that they were not impressed with the company’s efforts.

“The wall that you put up is very nice, it looks much better, but the dust doesn’t know to stay on one side of the wall,” one woman said to company officials.

After suggesting that the cement company was only interested in profit, not the well-being of the residents, Marge Sena made her point clear, saying: “We know what you want and we don’t want what you want. We want quality of life.”

After all of the residents had finished speaking, the hearing officer allowed Kathryn Kelly, Ph.D., a toxicologist hired by the GCC, to present some information about silicosis that had been requested by residents.

Kelly made the case that silicosis is an occupational hazard in certain industries, but that dust emitted from a cement transfer station posed absolutely no danger of silicosis.

Acknowledging that her claims had been met with cynical guffaws, she said, “This isn’t what you probably thought you came to hear.”

Kelly spoke politely and firmly. And when she said, “There’s no way there’s any silicosis that would ever be associated with this distribution terminal,” there was no audible protest from the audience.

As the four-hour hearing came to a close, one resident said, “I think everybody in this room would like to know, ‘Where do we go from here?’”

Division director Tavarez said that a decision would be made by September 15.

“We have one of three options, either issue it as requested, issue it with conditions… or we can deny the permit,” Tavarez said. But, he acknowledged, “It’s pretty difficult to deny a permit.”

Once the decision is made, any party can appeal it, first to the Air Quality Control Board, and eventually up to the state Supreme Court, Tavarez explained.

But if the permit were denied, American Cement would still be allowed to operate under its current permit.

By the end of the hearing, at 10 p.m., many of the 2o or so residents left seemed deflated. Several who testified on the record said that the plant should never have been allowed to open in their neighborhood. But a few vowed to appeal the decision.