Contributed
Smoke emissions from stacks at the Carib Cement Company's Rockfort plant as seen from the Palisadoes roadway in March of this year.Glenda Anderson, Staff Reporter
Five years after the Caribbean Cement Company (CCC) pumped almost $400 million into improving the management of dust emissions from its plants, residents of nearby Harbour View in eastern Kingston are again complaining of billows of dust particles descending on them like a grey plague at regular intervals.
Chevrie Hanlan, 45, says the material settles on plants, vehicles, clothes and anything that's exposed and comes directly from the company's emission stacks.
He claims that some persons even complain of health-related problems like sinusitis. "And it's not something you can wash off, so when it gets on things like cars or the plants it just stays there," he said pointing to a car and van in his backyard on Martello Drive, which had been covered by the sediments.
Hanlan an ex-employee of the Cement Company, was joined in his complaints by several citizens in the area who said that the nuisance extended from one end of the community to areas as far away as August Town in St. Andrew. The CCC, only one of several major industries on the stretch of roadway, utilises gypsum, shale and limestone which it excavates from the Long Mountain range. The range borders the communities of Harbour View, Rockfort, Wareika Hills and extends to sections of St. Andrew including August Town.
William Patterson, who lives on Neptune Drive in Harbour View, complained that the latest heavy downflow came last weekend. "It was as if somebody took flour and threw all over the place," he said, adding that he had to spray plants and awnings repeatedly to wash off the dust collected overnight.
"It happens mostly on weekends and at nights but then you can't find anybody down at the company to talk to," he complained.
But despite grumbling from the citizens, CCC officials are saying that the problem may not necessarily be theirs. Stephen Parris, environment officer at the Cement Company's head office at Rockfort, says he is "not aware of any recent complaints," and as such cannot comment on material which may or may not have come from the plant.
He also dismissed suggestions that any residue from the plant could be harmful to residents.
"The partially clinkerised material which is released from the plant is not capable of posing a health hazard. It's more a nuisance than a hazard. It's not harmful," he insisted.
Mr. Parris says that persons may be harmed by exposure to the hot dust emitted while on the plant or if it came in contact with their skin or if they stepped in the material which when hot exceeds temperatures of 200 degrees Celsius, but once the material is airborne it is cooled.
Still Baldwin Sharpe, another resident, is not satisfied contending that the type of local illnesses which have become common in the area may be traced to the persistent dust problem. "Most of the people around here, have either asthma or sinus trouble, old or young and I believe it is caused by the cement dust."
He dismissed suggestions that the situation could have been caused by nearby construction sites. "What they do down there is wet sand and that don't come down here."
For his part, Vincent McDowell who has been living in the area since 1972 says over the years persons have become frustrated in their attempts to get assistance.
"We call them all the while but nobody does anything. Sometimes they tell you they can't reach anybody, they have no number. Nobody comes around to talk to you. Sometimes it is so bad that even though you close up your car and house, you come back in the evenings and the dust is over everything."
Luna Donnie, who says she has lived in the area for over 20 years, says the problem which used to aggravate her sinuses has eased a bit. "It used to be real bad, but now it's just once and again."
But the local environment watchdog agency National Environment Planning Agency (NEPA) said it had no recent complaints.
Information officer Ruthlyn Johnson said complaints had instead come in about a dust nuisance from a construction site above the Operation Pride Housing scheme in the area. The agency is still investigating that matter.
Under NEPA's guidelines at least three monitoring stations are required in the vicinity of each major source of dust emission. This should include one that monitors population exposure. This would be selected based on communities with highest predicted concentration and those with a history of community complaints.
But although the CCC maintains five stations in the area, it is yet to reach the targets set by local environmental agency standards. The company still uses an old open-ended monitoring device approved by the World Bank but admits that this is woefully inefficient as it gives only a standard 29 days reading and does not register unusual incidents. Plant officials say that to date, the equipment has never registered a reading which exceeded target levels for the community.
Mr. Parris says that the company is still "just in the process of getting monitoring equipment to measure ourselves against NEPA's guidelines." This he said included acquiring seven opacity measuring devices, one of which had already been purchased. Each company is given a seven-year period within which to comply with NEPA standards.
Parris says that the company now uses 28 dust collectors in an ongoing project of revamping equipment and recycling material back into the process. These, he said, are the main steps in a plan to reduce the problem of dust emission which had plagued communities of Rockfort and Harbour View for years.
In 1997 the company spent over $376 million to refurbish dust plants, rehabilitate existing air filter systems and install new systems including a Dust Insufflation Bin that was to redirect dust flows from neighbourhoods and roadways back into the plant's collection areas. It seemed to have been effective as complaints declined.
"But like everything else of this magnitude it's not an overnight thing it is a process," Mr. Parris said last week, adding that the work would involve "millions of dollars especially to replace the larger units. The servicing is going through area by area and this takes time."
He said that while most of the smaller units were working well some of the larger units were admittedly not up to standard and as such, "equipment may malfunction from time to time."
