Wanted to share this letter with you. 

Regarding your Jan. 27 editorial "Cement site," I have spent much of my life working in cement plants and strongly disagree with the statement that cement production is a heavily polluting industry. On the contrary, it has become one of the environmentally cleanest. That happened decades ago when all U.S. plants installed expensive and elaborate pollution-control equipment, including electrostatic precipitators and bag houses that help to make them the cleanest in the world. All plants have, for many years, been routinely supervised and inspected by state and federal agencies.

There undoubtedly are other locations than Castle Hayne that Titan America could consider. But all of them, if they are to be in the U.S., will have to be in states other than North Carolina because every plant must have an adequate supply of limestone, and there is no other such deposit in this state.

If Titan America plans on 1.5 million tons per year, the plant would be no bigger than the Permanente plant near San Jose, Calif., the largest in the USA, that has been operating successfully and under close environmental supervision for over 60 years.

You correctly call cement a vital construction material. But refusing to produce it here would be one more indicator of the decline of this country. Cement has already been imported from countries like Mexico, Colombia, China and Turkey. Why continue this unfortunate trend? Not only would our foreign debt put us further in the hole, the imported cement is usually made in plants far less environmentally safe than our own plants. Air travels around the globe, and dirty air over a foreign cement plant is bound to end up everywhere anyway.

The prospect of jobs and a boost for the Wilmington economy are a serious matter. North Carolina, like the country as a whole, has to get back to work and produce things here.

Fred D. Ullman

Raleigh

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