Category: Building Supplies

What a difference a year and a couple of months can make, at least when you’re talking about air quality in California. In January of 2009, a US District Court issued a ruling mandating that CEMEX California pay a fine for releasing too many pollutants into the air. Their Victorville Portland Cement plant was cited for excessive emissions of materials like nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide. Under the court’s ruling, the plant’s owners were ordered to pay a hefty fine, and even more importantly, they were compelled to upgrade their equipment to eliminate the bulk of these dangerous emissions.

Today that same Victorville plant, owned by CEMEX California, is required to follow stringent requirements set forth by the state and the EPA. This includes an edict to limit their dangerous nitrogen oxide emissions that will reduce their output by forty percent. When the state prevailed against CEMEX in their suit, a spokesperson for the EPA’s Air Division for the Pacific Southwestern Region observed that the court’s ruling meant that CEMEX California and its Victorville plant would no longer be one of California’s major polluters. Instead, by installing the mandated state-of-the-art air pollution controls in that manufacturing facility, they will have a significant impact (positively) on the state’s air quality. While it is clear that all big manufacturing facilities, including those in California, still need to do more to clean up the air we breathe, at least there is one that has complied with the edicts of the court and is now producing less pollution, setting a model for other companies to imitate. Hopefully other polluters will avoid the courts and undertake implementing air pollution controls on their own, without having to be forced to do their part to improve air quality. The earth will breathe a little easier, and so will we, when every individual and company takes the steps necessary to provide us with clean air for today, and for generations to come.