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EPA Withdraws Proposed Ozone Standards The Sept. 2 announcement by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) withdrawing a proposal to pre‐ maturely tighten ozone standards was welcomed by transportation construction firms and local communities across America. If the agency had proceeded, hundreds of cities across America would have been out of compli‐ ance with the Clean Air Act (CAA) and, in turn, had their federal funds for highway improvements at risk. "Jeopardizing urgently needed highway investments in new areas through implementation of the EPA's recom‐ mendations would have been self‐defeating and imposed new obstacles for needed transportation improvements that can cut both harmful emissions and billions of dol‐ lars in wasted motor fuel caused by traffic congestion," said Nick Goldstein, American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) vice president of environ‐ mental and regulatory affairs. The ozone standards, tightened as recently as 2008, were not required to be reviewed again until at least 2013. The EPA, however, announced in 2010 that it would examine the standards three years ahead of time. ARTBA vigorously opposed EPA's plan to implement an early review of the ozone rules, noting that many locali‐ ties were still struggling to implement the standards set in 2008. ARTBA warned that EPA's action would be akin to "moving the goalposts" in the middle of a game. Over the past two years, the association has filed multi‐ ple sets of regulatory comments and testified before EPA hearings, urging the agency not to proceed with its pre‐ mature review of the ozone standards. In February 2011, ARTBA noted "nearly 34,000 people die on U.S. highways each year and many federally funded highway improvements are designed specifically to address safety issues. As such, imposing new ozone standards that lead to highway improvements being denied could be counter‐ productive to improving public health." EPA's announcement underscores ARTBA's long held belief that the transportation sector is making significant gains in air quality and these gains should not be jeopardized by an unnecessary review of the ozone standards. ARTBA will continue to be involved with EPA leading up to the 2013 re‐ view of the ozone rules and ensure that transportation im‐ provements are not unnecessarily threatened.E 42 ROCKproducts • OCTOBER 2011 Lafarge Introduces Lower-CO2 Portland-Limestone Cement In response to ever‐increasing market demand for sus‐ tainable building solutions, Lafarge has introduced a new portland‐limestone cement (PLC) commercial of‐ fering in Canada. Widely used in Europe for more than 25 years, PLC is a new category of cement that provides performance sim‐ ilar to conventional portland cement with up to 10 per‐ cent less CO2 emissions. Approved for use by the Canadian Standards Association, the National Building Code of Canada, and the British Co‐ lumbia, Ontario, and Quebec Building Codes, PLC is pro‐ duced by intergrinding portland cement clinker with between 6 percent and 15 percent limestone. Based on a number of trials, considerable testing, and Lafarge's innovative approach to PLC, the new GUL ce‐ ment with up to 15 percent limestone, which is well below the 35 percent limit in Europe, will achieve com‐ parable performance to regular portland cement in terms of concrete workability, set time, durability and all ages of concrete strength development. Because of these performance similarities and the sig‐ nificant sustainability advantages, Lafarge will start the transition from regular portland cement to PLC this year. Customers in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec are currently being supplied PLC from Lafarge's plants in Richmond, British Columbia, and Bath, Ontario. Product introduction to other provinces will occur as additional testing and updates to local building codes are completed, which is expected to occur by the end of 2012. With the potential to bring about a 10 percent reduc‐ tion in greenhouse gas emissions, the production of PLC at Lafarge's Richmond and Bath Cement Plants alone is expected to reduce CO2 emissions by 160,000 tons an‐ nually, which is equivalent to taking more than 30,000 cars off the road. In addition, concrete containing combinations of PLC and varying levels of supplementary cementing materi‐ als (up to 50 percent) will permit further reductions in the carbon footprint. E www.rockproducts.com