The Denton City Council postponed action Tuesday on a resolution that would have steered city contracts toward “environmentally friendly” cement purchases after Ash Grove Texas LP filed suit against other cities and school districts that have passed similar measures.

A handful of residents came to the council meeting Tuesday night to encourage the members not to be intimidated by the lawsuit. Some characterized its timing — it was filed the Wednesday before Thanksgiving — as directed specifically at Denton and the scheduled vote.

“The issue is really important, and I appeal to you not to be bullied,” said Peggy La Point, chairwoman of the Cross Timbers chapter of the Sierra Club.

Denton resident and environmental activist Ed Soph, who also attended the meeting to support incentives for energy-saving home improvement projects, encouraged the council to be consistent with its other environmental policies.

“This [resolution] is an incentive for a terrible polluter to clean up its act if it wants its products purchased by environmentally conscious cities,” Soph said.

The council’s environmental committee and city staff had been working on the resolution for a long time, Mayor Pro Tem Pete Kamp said. The council on Tuesday discussed the implications of the lawsuit.

Several council members appeared ready to vote in favor of the measure, but city attorney Anita Burgess urged the council to be cautious. They agreed to take up the matter again next Tuesday.

Ash Grove Texas LP, which is part of Kansas-based Ash Grove Cement, named Arlington, Dallas, Fort Worth and Plano — as well as Dallas and Tarrant counties and schools in Dallas County — in the suit. The company contends that “green” cement resolutions violate the company’s constitutional rights, as well as Texas laws on competitive bidding for public contracts.

Denton County Judge Mary Horn has twice tabled a Commissioners Court resolution to purchase only “green” cement for future projects. Her actions had nothing to do with the suit, but with rewording the resolution.

“My goal is to clean the air; my goal is not to put someone out of business. That’s why I wanted to make modifications; it was too destructive to my liking,” Horn said.

There would be no county requirement to only use “green” cement, rather a preference that would be made known when county projects go out for bid, she said.

Ash Grove has a valid point about the resolutions and clean technology concerns, Horn said. “There’s other ways to go about it.”

The suit claims Dallas’ adoption of a “green” cement resolution on May 23, 2007, led others to do the same.

Those cities now favor cement companies that use dry process kilns, which emit less smog-causing pollution than old-style, wet process kilns.

Alone among the three cement plants in Midlothian, Ash Grove has only wet process kilns.

Dallas-based TXI has four wet process kilns and one dry process kiln but has idled the wet kilns indefinitely. Swiss firm Holcim has two dry process kilns.

In a prepared statement, Ash Grove attorney Marshall J. Doke said that while Ash Grove has made strides in reducing emissions, the cities illegally impose unfair conditions on cement purchases.

A spokesman for the North Texas environmental group that led the campaign for the resolutions called the suit an attempt to keep other cities from adopting similar measures.

Staff writer Bj Lewis and Dallas Morning News writer Randy Lee Loftis contributed to this report.

PEGGY HEINKEL-WOLFE can be reached at 940-566-6881. Her e-mail address is pheinkel-wolfe@dentonrc.com.