Following on from the 8 page update about the works, which appears on the Environment and Local Affairs pages, I have no doubt that many residents have their views about the worth or otherwise of the Padeswood Cement Works. I hold industrial management qualifications and was for a few years, both a lecturer in management studies at Wirral Metropolitan College, Eastham and a Consultant in Industrial Management. I am the first to recognise that without "industry" in general, UK plc will be headed for a very hard time. However, since the company is very coy about numbers employed, nobody outside knows for certain as to whether the 214 fully emloyed jobs, within the works, indicated at the Public Inquiry in 2000, have been sustained or not. Best available information suggests that that number has fallen to around 100. One does have to remember the transport and other spin-offs of services and provisions that keep others, hopefully locally based, in employment. There is also no denying that the works has been "a good employer" over the years or that it treats its pensioners decently. So it should be throughout industry.
Against that, many members of the community around have their concerns and worries about the works. Internationally there are aspects of health and amenity impact that have troubled many who live around or downwind from cement works all around the world. Questions arise as to causes of cancer clusters, asthma, foetal abnormalities and so forth. All very emotive stuff. Currently, there is suspicion, suggestion and circumstantial evidence, but nothing by way of any legally acceptable causal bridge to firmly link any particular instance of human or animal health damage to cement making activities. It would also be quite unfair to pin all ills on the cement industry. Whoever chooses to smoke tobacco, in this day and age, when we know, conclusively, the health damage that smoking causes, cannot fairly utter a single word of complaint, except maybe a single one. That word would be "choice". We choose to smoke or not to. We have no choice in being dumped upon by whatever emanates from a cement works, no more than we realy have much choice about being affected by any one or a combination of the 80,000 or so man made chemical substances that our civilisation uses for manufacturing, commerce, trade, industry, sport or recreation and about which we really know very little in terms of effects on health. Fifty years ago, I was being warned of potential damage to health from smoking and from diesel fumes. Has much changed?
We live in a world where financial motives drive rapid change. Our quality of living depends upon speedy movement of people, goods and information. That comes at a cost. One question is, do we know the real cost? Another is would we accept or refuse the real cost if we had a choice to accept or reject it. Regrettably, in most cases we do not know. So it is with any cement works and matters of health impact.
However, when it comes to loss of amenity, that is a very different kettle of fish. There something can be done. Dumping dust, noise, odour and night-time light on local residents is actionable in Civil Law. That action I am now taking, on behalf of the community. A Group Action of affected residents is actually now progressing.
The idea is not to make individuals wealthy at cost to the cement company, although a measure of compensation will be involved for every resident who signs up to join in the legal action. The primary aim is to obtain a court injunction to force the cement works management to ensure that the works is, in future, A GOOD NEIGHBOUR!
Bluntly, if the works management had listened to, instead of denying, and if the Environment Agency had properly regulated over, rather than ignored, the continual complaints of the ordinary people, this action would not have been necessary.
However, now that it is under way, and well under way, it will follow its natural course, through the courts until completed with a win for the people of the area. It will be a case of Power to the People, which is what my kind of independent political activity is all about.
Dozens of affected residents have already joined the action. If you wish for an invitation to it, to listen to me and to the Legal Team from Hugh James Solicitors, get in touch with me. Telephone 01244 549421 or email at arnoldwoolley@hotmail.com. If you have suffered in silence over the years, now is your opportunity to gain some personal justice and help improve the lot of the entire community. Make that call! Now!!!
Meanwhile, life, and the emissions from the cement works both continue. Just as we can compare our present with our past, so we can compare emissions from the cement work. Take a look at the Environment Agency's own on-line information. I actually reported on this to Buckley Town Council on 26th February, 2008. On the Pollution Inventory for 2004, the last full year of operation of the old cement kilns and you will find that the company reported on 119 chemical substances emitted to air, from Arsenic to Zinc. If you take a look at the same Pollution Iventory figures for 2006, the first full year of operation of the new Kiln 4, you will find only 46 substances emitted to air have been reported upon. What has become of the other 73? Then we have to look at the amounts being emitted, remembering that we were promised "environmental improvement" from Kiln 4. The good news is that for 19 heavy metal substances, emissions have gone DOWN. Whoopie! However, there is a bit of bad news. A few substances show INCREASED emissions. Remember now, production has gone up 50%, so one might take the reasonable view that emissions of the various substances would go up by about 50%. Regrettably, Carbon Monoxide has gone up by 166%, Chromium has gone up by 364% and Mercury by a whopping 897%. That last one is one of the real "nasties" and there should be some investigation into what has caused that. Both the Env. Agency and Castle will argue that the 20.7kgs that was pitched into the air we breath during 2006 is well within the 90 or so kgs allowable each year, but that is not the point. If the new kiln can reduce emissions of 19 other subsances why can it not reduce the other few and make our air a little better to breathe than it was under the old kilns?
Interestingly, when the Chronicle for Friday 29th February, 2008 reported the news, it left off much of my factual report to Buckley TC and concentrated on the Mercury increase. They also managed to attribute to me certain words that I never uttered, such as "horror" and "alarming." Regrettably, local and other politicians suffer from the fact that it is in the commercial interests of the newspapers that news should be converted into sensation, because it is sensation that sells newspapers, not balanced, accurate reporting.
