Holcim US Inc' s Hagerstown cement plant is to comply with a July settlement from the US Environmental Protection Agency, reports the local Herald Mail. The upgrade work will ensure that the plant meets pollution reduction requirements.

Robin DeCarlo, vice president of corporate communications, said modifications to the plant have not begun yet: “We’re still ... in the design and engineering phase,” DeCarlo said.

The EPA said in July that Holcim had agreed to invest about US$20m or more to resolve violations of the Clean Air Act at the Security Road plant.

Holcim recently signed a contract with KHD Humbolt Wedag International AG’s Americas Customer Service Center in Georgia for engineering, delivery of equipment and site services to modify the production line at the Security Road plant.

The plant’s “existing rotating kiln will be shortened by two-thirds, and a state-of-the-art heat transfer tower will be erected over the top of the remaining rotating kiln,” DeCarlo wrote in an email Thursday. “In addition, a modern highly energy-efficient product cooler will replace the existing cooler.

“This modernisation will ensure we are in compliance with these health standards,” she said. Holcim employs about 100 people at the Hagerstown plant.

Holcim and the plant’s former owner, St Lawrence Cement Co LLC, reached the settlement with the EPA in July, with Holcim agreeing to reduce the SOx emission by 230tpa, and NOx by 92tpa by 9 September 2016, according to an EPA news release.

That would limit the sulphur dioxide emissions to 655tpa and 1.8lb of nitrogen oxides/t clinker produced, the release said.