Economic crisis may force California to backtrack...

It's climate goals may be unrealistic...

Only a few years ago, CalPortland planned on keeping its plant here operating as long as Mount Slover’s limestone held out. For more than a century, Colton’s kilns and crushing machines have been churning out cement for the streets and buildings of Los Angeles.

CalPortland, which employs 140 people in Colton, Calif., says the economy has put the plant’s future in doubt.

The CalPortland plant is one of 11 California cement plants that is being required to upgrade to curb carbon dioxide emissions.

But the company says the plant’s future is now uncertain. The recession has sent cement prices plunging, lowered profits and forced CalPortland’s drivers to cut back on hours. And the company says it faces new expenses: the cost of meeting California’s new requirements that manufacturers take steps to curb emissions of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas linked to global warming.

State regulators have projected that retrofitting the state’s 11 cement plants would cost $220 million and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 12 percent per ton of cement. But CalPortland’s executives say it would cost more than that to retrofit the Colton plant alone.

“We don’t have enough limestone left to invest $200 million,” said James A. Repman, the company’s president.

The whole thing is silly....$200 million to reduce CO2, which in my opinion, is NOT pollution.