US: Officials from Carolinas Cement Company have announced that the Division of Air Quality of the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has issued an air quality permit to parent company Titan America LLC to construct a cement plant in Castle Hayne. The issuance comes after four years of technical review of the proposed facility to ensure it will comply with North Carolina's air quality regulations and standards.

The permit was issued after extensive evaluation by DENR, including using air models that incorporate government-approved local meteorological, topographic and site-specific information. The models calculate the concentrations of regulated emissions at the boundaries of the plant property and ambient concentrations throughout the local region and other designated locations to assure they are below legal limits.

"These laws and regulations governing industrial emissions are among the strictest in the world," said Dan Crowley, Titan America's VP of Corporate Engineering. "The issuance of our air quality permit is only a first step. After the plant begins operating we will be subject to unannounced audits by State and Federal regulators as well as internal compliance audits to ensure our emissions are consistently within permitted limits." Carolinas Cement will meet all the new Environmental Protection Agency federal regulations for Portland cement plants that were finalised in 2010, and these regulations are fully represented in the Department of Air Quality permit.

Now that the air quality permit has been issued, Carolinas Cement plans to proceed with completing the federal Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) needed to obtain necessary wetlands permits. The EIS is an 18-24 month process led by the US Army Corps of Engineers (COE) and it requires Carolinas Cement to hire an independent third party to conduct studies of potential impact to numerous ecological and social factors, such as water, aquifers, traffic and flora and fauna.

Parallel to the COE permitting process, Titan America will begin a two-year process to design and engineer the new plant. The design process could not begin prior to the issuance of the air permit, as the design must correspond to the exact standards outlined by the air permit. The new plant will pioneer the industry's most advanced emission control technologies to ensure that public health, the aquifers, Cape Fear River and Island Creek are protected throughout every step of this process.

When it clears all of the regulatory hurdles, Carolinas Cement will create 161 permanent, full-time jobs. During construction it will create 1000 temporary jobs over two-years.