THE court hearing into three alleged breaches by Castle Cement of the Environment Agency condition that there must be "no haze and odour causing offence outside the site boundary" has now been put back to September 13.

Originally set for July to consider the March 1999 breach, the hearing was first postponed to allow the agency to include two more alleged breaches, then twice more to give Castle "time for consideration."

If a further incident on July 28 is added, or the agency finally decides to prosecute on the April 1998 alleged breaches, when 149 complaints were made to the hotline and 72 voluntary statements were taken for use in court, the hearing may well be rescheduled again (and again?)

This will not bother Castle unduly, I expect, as any delays would improve the odds of the Agency approving the application to trial the far more toxic mix of 'Cemfuel' in Kiln 7 before the courts decide, but would make no sense at all to the hundreds who agreed with Friends of the Earth and sent letters objecting to the application in January 1999. They might wonder why, when the July pollution in Waddington forced yet another 'turning down' of the kilns, the application should not be shelved pending the outcome of the hearings. Or what justification there could possibly be for allowing trials in a kiln which, it is alleged, regularly breaches a legally-enforceable condition, three examples of which are about to be tested in the courts in just over a week's time.

The competence of the Agency in this matter can perhaps be judged by the March 5, 1999, letter from the Plant Inspector, Mr Coulburn, when he said that the reason for not prosecuting over the 'justified' April, 1998, complaints, was that an enforcement notice was 'appropriate,' as it was "the first confirmed breach of the haze and odour condition."

I'm sorry, Mr Coulburn, but given the notice taken by Castle of this staggering conclusion, as the subsequent and continuing alleged breaches suggest, the Agency is clearly incompetent to judge what is or is not 'appropriate' in this matter!

The courts must decide!

J D MORTIMER (Mr), (Group, co-ordinator, Friends of the Earth, Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley), Green Drive, Clitheroe.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.