Carolina Solite wants to stop burning hazardous waste altogether — but still rely on coal, diesel and used motor oil to heat kilns used to make a lightweight building material, the attorneys said. Unlike paints, lacquers and other chemicals the plant can burn now, motor oil doesn’t fall under the state’s regulations for hazardous waste.

But Carolina Solite environmental director Steve Holt said the company hasn’t made that decision yet.

“We are evaluating the cost of it,” said Holt, who was on vacation this morning in Holden Beach. “We haven’t gotten to a final decision. I’d have to pull back from that and say that statement is a little strong.”

Citing the company’s history of environmental-law violations, neighbors still aren’t happy. They want Carolina Solite closed.

“The best thing you can do is shut them down,” said an angry Raymond Booth, who lives near the plant. “You just can’t trust those people.”

For the first time as a group, some 20 homeowners and attorneys and activists supporting them met in Raleigh to protest the plant. They spent more than two hours Wednesday in a 14th-floor conference room in downtown Raleigh — just one block from the Legislature — with the state’s top attorneys and environmental regulators.

As some cried and others shouted, they held up signs and photographs of children and grandchildren. They unfurled a list of 1,500 signatures of people who want the plant shut down.

State officials said that in recent negotiations, Carolina Solite attorneys said the business plans to stop burning hazardous waste altogether.

“They have made clear to us that their intent would be to completely close out the hazardous waste operation,” state attorney Robin Smith said.

That news wasn’t what Stanly County residents and supporters came to hear.

“You tender to us that they keep operating and act like it’s Christmas morning for us,” said Raleigh attorney and environmental activist Lewis Pitts. “I remember a whole lot of promises in the past 12 years and a whole lot of law breaking, and it tends to get lost in the shuffle of administration.”

“I know Solite,” attorney Mark Finkelstein said. “The compliance history hasn’t changed because of this announcement.”

“Burning used motor oil and coal in a 47-year-old, leaky, aging facility is no victory,” said Jim Warren, director of the N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network. “We don’t trust them to burn matches.”

Joann Almond, who has fought the plant for years, says the company hasn’t held to its past commitments and won’t hold to its most recent one. The company once promised picnic tables around a stocked pond, but instead only spilled oil into a creek, she said. It said natural gas was not an option for heating its kilns, she said; then residents found out that a line runs right by the plant.

“They promised that before to restore their relationship with the community,” Almond said. “And a few months passed and they were right back to burning hazardous waste.

“ ... We have been used as a guinea pig in so many ways for hazardous chemicals. The state has known about this and done nothing as we continuously ask them to please protect us.”

“No one asked us. No one told us about it,” added neighbor Jahala Williams. “They just did it, and now we’re stuck with it. And I can’t believe the state allows it ... I’ve lived there all my life and never believed our government would allow this.”

Residents repeatedly demanded to know why the state continues to allow Solite to operate despite its history of problems.

They never got a clear explanation.

Keith Overcash, deputy director of the N.C. Division of Air Quality, said his agency decided to trust Carolina Solite two years ago in a settlement of past problems because it had recently begun using new pollution-control equipment and had been sold to a much larger company.

Since then, the new filters installed as part of that settlement have failed three tests. For that, Warren said, the state should follow the wording of the settlement and fine Carolina Solite $400,000 or more and cut its waste burning in half.

The state is now investigating why air near the plant has the highest recorded concentrations of arsenic in North Carolina. Residents say Carolina Solite’s waste-burning has caused breathing problems and cancer.

Carolina Solite says it hasn’t burned hazardous waste since Nov. 12, but many residents refuse to believe that.Watching tanker trucks pass on Stanly County’s rural roads to haul fuel to the remote plant, some even suspect that diesel fuel is mixed there with hazardous waste and shipped to other locations.

Smith said the state needs more evidence of violations before it can pursue forcing Carolina Solite to close.

“We have a range of enforcement options available to us,” Smith said. “We have to choose which one to use.

“ ... We have initiated health studies. Without that information, you would have nothing to take to the courts. People are trying to do the right thing.”