This just in over the wires for you to add to your comments to DAQ Chief Keith Overcash and Governor Bev Perdue on Titan's draft air permit.

Yesterday, October 21, the New York law firm of Labaton Sucharow, LLC, filed a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for South Florida against Titan Cement and several other cement manufacturers alleging a major price-fixing scandal. According to Reuters, Titan and the other companies allegedly conspired to artificially inflate the price of cement. The law firm filed the large class-action suit on behalf of all purchasers of Portland cement or Ready-Mix concrete in the state of Florida since 2000.

Jay Himes, co-chair of the law firm's anti-trust division and former top anti-trust lawyer for New York's Attorney General, told Reuters Business Wire, "We intend to vigorously prosecute on behalf of our clients that have been hurt as a result of this major price fixing scandal." [emphasis added]

Other companies targeted in the lawsuit along with Titan include some of the biggest names in the business:  Cemex, Holcim, Lafarge, Lehigh, Suwannee American, Florida Rock Industries, and Votorantim Cimentos.

Any local builder or developer who thinks Titan will provide them with a "cheap" supply of cement, should think again, as should anyone who believes this company will be a "good corporate citizen." Their actions at the hearing (busing in out of state ringers) and this new lawsuit should show everyone Titan's true colors.

Read all about it on Reuters at:
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS186981+22-Oct-2009+BW20091022

See the actual lawsuit here:
http://stoptitan.org/uploads/titan_suit.pdf

While we still can, we had a beautiful paddle yesterday on Island Creek, which is a creek of the Cape Fear river directly adjacent to the Ideal Cement plant / Titan cement property. On the way out there, on the corner of Highway 17 and 210, we saw this fantastic, giant banner about the effects of Titan this close to fishing, recreation, residences.

Atlantic Seafood, owned by Joe Smith and family

The paddlers' wing of Stop Titan

Blue on black: the creek in question

We’ve already pulled together the numbers to show that an estimated 8,700 students will attend schools within 5 miles of Titan’s proposed cement plant. And you’ve probably heard that more than 240 local doctors oppose Titan because of the potential health impacts to our community, especially our children. But what we didn’t tell you, because we just found out, was that our New Hanover County School Board and New Hanover County Commissioners approved the purchase and construction of the Castle Hayne Elementary and Middle Schools RIGHT BESIDE A FEDERALLY DESIGNATED SUPERFUND SITE. No kidding here. The new elementary and middle schools off Holly Shelter Road are a mere 700 feet from the former site of the Reasor Chemical Company (1959-1972) that left behind a slew of toxic waste in groundwater, soils, ponds, and surrounding wetlands including arsenic, mercury, lead, and dioxins. The plant apparently went up in smoke in the early 1970s after an explosion and fire. After an initial investigation in 1997 and 1998, the EPA put the site on the National Priority List, a waiting list for hazardous waste sites across the nation. A few years later, the EPA moved it up to a Superfund site, a program intended to protect the public and the environment by cleaning up the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites. Here’s a link to the EPA site that describes the contamination: http://www.epa.gov/region4/waste/npl/nplnc/reasornc.htm and here’s a link to a list of hazardous wastes found on this site: http://cfpub.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=second.Contams&id=0405590