Socio-economic and Environmental Impacts of Hegmatan Cement Company in Shahanjari Village

Introduction On one hand, economic development as a fundamental section in every country's policies has a close relation to industry and technology, and on the other hand it is related to environmental pollutions. Considering the fundamental role of industry in the process of development in developing countries, the relation between industrial activities and the rate of pollution caused by industry section are of great importance. According to potential and capacities of cement industry, it can causes a tremendous improvement and flourish in terms of other "requisite" and "prerequisite" activities as well as its critical role in the case of the "volume" and the "value" of non-oil export, however, to reach these economic benefits, environmental damages caused by cement companies are inevitable. These damages include air pollution, water pollution and pollution of underground water in the region and so on. Emissions from the cement industry include particles, compounds of carbon, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, among them particles are more important because they are more produced and emitted in the environment. Methodology This study is a descriptive-analytical survey, and questionnaires had been used as the data collection method. The population in this study includes 2300 residents of Shahanjari village, according to Morgan's Table, 175 people had been chosen randomly as the study population. Questionnaires as the tool of data collection are divided to four parts and include environmental, agricultural, social-cultural and economic issues to assess impacts of Cement Company on environment and economic (21 variables). For data analysis, Frequency Distribution Tables, Average Statistics, Factor Analysis method and Correlation Coefficient had been used. Discussion and Conclusion Increase in regional employment rate and also economic development is the important positive impacts of Cement Company in this region. Of course, Cement Company have negative impacts on the region including destruction of a large part of agricultural lands in the village, yield decline of agricultural production and increase in the number of people with respiratory diseases. Although, farming is the main occupation, it is also severely affected by the company using up the water resources in the region and agriculture is confronted to the decline in production. Certainly, economic impacts of Cement Company are more than these and other positive economic impacts of Cement Company include increase in facilities and services in the region, more opportunities to get second job in the region, and improvement of the villagers' income. From a social point of view, other considered issues as the result of the construction of this company are residents' satisfaction, improvement of rural roads, decrease in rural-urban migration which have positive impacts in the region on the long term and this leads to population stability and avoiding irregular migration. In conclusion, it can be said that on one hand, Cement Company had a lot of positive impacts, on the other hand it caused reduction of farmers' income which is the direct result of Cement Company location, farming is encountered with some problems, it reduces green area expansion in the region and most of farmers are not satisfied of these conditions.