Mr Bryan White in his letter The firm must pay (Wiltshire Times, April 16) has accurately identified the politicians and their officers as the people behind decision to allow a state of mothballing to continue at the Lafarge plant into the coming years, with no time deadline.
He is right in assessing that there would exist a plan of closure if and when the company no longer wish to operate from this site.
This should be placed very shortly on the public register by the Environment Agency.
I suggest he visit it to find out what that would mean. For example does it mean chimney and plant decommissioning, quarry restitution, field restitution as standard ?
The legal position now is that we are deliberately left in this state of limbo on the almost ridiculous hope of recommissioning of the plant from this mothballed state.
The politicians are happy with this because they no longer have to explain why the quarry was allowed to develop in such an unsafe manner where it now needs additional land to make it safe for public amenity use and in a rather perverse concept they wish this industry to recommence with an environmental unsustainable carbon footprint.
The industry should now be addressing this issue through the use of magnesium silicates.
The cement industry which does this will be the market leader and our weak willed politicians should be insisting on a new cement industry which has cut its mega carbon footprint to conform to our obligations of 80 per cent reduction by 2050. I am sorry but that means Westbury at best will be a distribution centre only.
Meanwhile the firm does not have to pay the bill yet.
David Levy, Chair, The Air That We Breathe Network and Executive of UK Without Incineration Network.
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