I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is cracking down on pollution from cement manufacturing plants, announcing new rules this week intended to curb mercury and particulate pollution nationwide. Cement kilns are a leading source of mercury emissions in the U.S., according to agency records, but this is the first time the government has intervened to curb mercury air pollution from cement plants.
Neighbors of an American Cement transfer station in Albuquerque made headlines last year when they mobilized to halt particulate emissions — fugitive dust — from the facility, which does not contain a kiln.
The facility’s parent company owns the state’s only cement kiln, the Rio Grande Tijeras Cement Plant in Tijeras, according to state Environment Department records.
“The rules are expected to yield $7 to $19 in public health benefits for evey dollar in costs,” according to the agency’s announcement. “Mercury can damage children’s developing brains, and particle pollution is linked to a wide variety of serious health effects, including aggravated asthma, irregular heartbeat, heart attacks and premature death in people with heart and lung disease.”
When fully implemented in 2013, the new rules will cut annual emissions of mercury by more than 16,000 tons, and particulate air pollution by 11,500 tons a year, the agency estimates.
In a settlement with the Greater Gardner Neighborhood Association, American Cement’s parent company, Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua (GCC), agreed to install leak detectors at the facility this month.
“What the neighborhood discovered when the American Cement facility was being run irresponsibly by its prior owners, is that no amount of visual evaluation requirements can protect people from fugitive emissions,” Greater Gardner Neighborhood Association board member Kyle Silfer told The Independent.
“It’s worth noting that the city-county Air Quality Division would never have required such technology and that the only monitoring requirements written into the original permit relied solely on visual observation of opacity,” Silfer said. “In the past that reliance led to people digging chunks of cement out of their swamp cooler pans. We’re happy that (owner) GCC has agreed to go the extra mile.”
