Approximately 2,300 children attend school each day within a 4-mile radius of the smokestack -- over 1,250 of whom spend their days immediately across the street from the Lafarge plant, at the R-C-S Middle and High schools. We are concerned about not only mercury, but also lead, other heavy metals, carcinogens, particulate matter and other harmful substances being emitted by Lafarge. No one seems to know what else is coming out of the smoke stack or who it is affecting. The only thing we do know is that nothing coming out of the stack is benign.
As members of the community, we are keenly aware of the important economic role of Lafarge in our town. It is not our goal to see the plant shut down or for people to lose their jobs. Rather, we seek to understand the impact of heavy industrialization on the health and welfare of our families and children and to secure a safe future for us all.
As such, we would like to know precisely what is being emitted from the Lafarge cement plant, in what quantities, where this pollution is settling, the health impacts of these emissions as well as who is being affected. We seek clear, comprehensive and definitive data rather than estimates, projections, and assumptions. Until it can be confirmed that these emissions have not and will not harm our children and our families, we intend to diligently search for these answers.
"For my children, their children, their children's children, and for all children -- they depend on us to ask why and act on the answers, however difficult."
