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Sunday, August 05, 2007

Environment - More on the U.S. Steel Gary Works/Grand Calumet permit, and related issues

The second part of this ILB entry from July 26th quoted from a story by Gitte Laasby in the Gary Post-Tribune that began:

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management has drafted a permit allowing U.S. Steel Gary Works to continue discharging an average of 2,802 pounds of oil and grease per day into the east branch of the Grand Calumet River -- the same branch of the river the company is still trying to clean up.
A July 29th P-T editorial about the draft permit concludes:
What we don't understand is the logic behind the Indiana Department of Environmental Management drafting a permit that would allow U.S. Steel to continue discharging an average of 2,802 pounds of oil and grease per day into the east branch of the Grand Calumet River -- the same branch U.S. Steel is trying to clean up on orders of the U.S. Department of Justice.

We don't understand why regulators OK'd this oil and grease disposal plan in the first place and don't understand why it would be allowed to continue. Let's move the Grand Cal clean-up process forward and find another alternative for grease and oil disposal.

The 800,000 cubic yards of harmful sediment U.S. Steel has removed from the river is a good start, but the river won't see much improvement with a continued daily dose of oil and grease.

This pre-meeting P-T article from July 31st began "Environmentalists are gearing up for the public meeting on U.S. Steel Gary Works' new wastewater permit Wednesday." The results of the meeting are given in reports by both the P-T and the NWI Times. From the P-T story, dated 8/2/07:
Some attendees brought up the fact that U.S. Steel's previous permit expired in 1999. The permit was issued in 1994 and has been administratively extended. That means the company is allowed to continue to discharge what the old permit allows.

IDEM is required to renew permits every five years to reflect more recent, and usually stricter, limits for pollutants. State Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary, asked why it wasn't renewed earlier.

"I don't have a good excuse. It's been too long," Pigott admitted.

Kim Ferraro, attorney from the Hoosier Environmental Council, pointed out that IDEM had years to review the permit and asked for additional time to prepare comments to the permit. The deadline is set for Aug. 11.

Pigott asked attendees to make the request in writing and said he would confer with Commissioner Thomas Easterly about an extension of the comment period and possibly another public meeting.

An addendum to the story reports:
In response to a Post-Tribune request earlier this week, an IDEM spokesman said the agency still has 10 major and 29 minor backlogged permits that have been administratively extended. Among the major facilities are U.S. Steel, U.S. Steel Midwest, I.S.G. (formerly LTV steel), Mittal Steel (formerly Bethlehem Steel), Mittal Steel (formerly ISPAT Inland), G.E. Plastics, a landfill and two municipal treatment plants, in Indianapolis and Speedway. That's down from 276 backlogged permits in 2005.
From a story in the NWI Times on the same meeting by Dan Hinkel, which begins:
Wednesday night's public meeting on the renewal of a long-lapsed wastewater permit for U.S. Steel Gary Works turned into a complaint session over environmental management in Indiana. The Indiana Department of Environmental Management's controversial wastewater permit change for the BP Whiting Refinery surfaced a few times.

"After BP, everybody is pretty ticked off at your organization," said Paula Peeples, of Miller.

Valparaiso lawyer Kim Ferraro cited a study that panned Indiana's environmental quality.

"We're 48th out of 50, and that really sucks," Ferraro said.

The P-T's Gitte Laasby follows up on IDEM's permit backlog in this comprehensive August 5th story that should be read in full:
When an Indiana Department of Environmental Management official told attendees at the public meeting about U.S. Steel's new wastewater permit that the company's permit expired in 1999, sighs and shouts of shock billowed through the crowd.

"How does that happen that it's now seven or eight years old?" state Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary, burst out Wednesday night.

"I don't have a good excuse. It's been too long," IDEM Assistant Commissioner Bruno Pigott said. "It's been administratively extended, and administratively extended too long."

But U.S. Steel's permit is not the only one that's backlogged.

When IDEM's backlog was at its highest in 2005, the agency was 276 permits behind.

Today, the agency is down to 29 minor facilities plus 10 of the state's biggest polluters, including a handful in Northwest Indiana that are coming up for public comment. The permit listed for International Steel Group -- now Mittal Steel in East Chicago -- expired 16 years ago. The one for Mittal Steel Burns Harbor expired in 1993. The controversial permit for BP Products North America Inc., that IDEM just renewed expired Feb. 28, 1995.

Since then, IDEM has administratively extended the permits, which allows polluters to continue to discharge according to the old requirements.

For regular residents, that means beach closings and mercury releases may have been avoided if permits were updated to reflect tougher standards on mercury release, monitoring and temperature of the discharge, Tom Anderson, executive director of Save the Dunes, said. * * *

Had the permit for U.S. Steel Gary Works been renewed before it expired in 1999, conditions may have been better for the salmon in Grand Calumet River, he said. The old permit allows the company to discharge about 4 pounds of cyanide into the river per day regardless of the season. The permit that's currently up for public comment requires the company to cut cyanide discharges by 20 percent while salmon are present in the river.

Lee Botts, environmental activist from Miller, said administrative extensions also go against the intent of the Clean Water Act to work toward reducing pollution over time.

"So the law says that the water quality standards should be reviewed very three years, and that the discharge permits should be reviewed and renewed every five years with the goal of reducing the amount that's released," Botts said. "When the permits are not renewed, technically that means the discharger can continue to discharge at the rate allowed by the permit. From the discharger's perspective, when the permit is not renewed, not having it renewed means they're living with uncertainty what the future requirements would be."

The Clean Water Act also asks environmental regulators to consider advances in technology to remove pollution when they set discharge limits.

"If we would have had more attention on both the deadlines and the technology forcing requirements of the Clean Water Act, I think we would have had cleaner water," Anderson said. * * *

The EPA told states to process permits for major facilities first, setting the deadline for 90 percent of major permits at the end of 2001. For minor ones, the end of 2004.

IDEM prioritized differently, starting with the simpler permits.

"We had a huge backlog so the harder ones got to sit on the back burner," said Steve Roush, IDEM policy analyst and permit writer. "The folks above us wanted the numbers down. We've got all the steel mills up in northern Indiana" yet to go.

Finally, here is an Aug. 2nd column in the P-T by their biweekly columnist, Michael Goodson. The headline: "There was a time we accepted polluting air, lake." Goodson must have grown up in "The Region" about the same time as I did. Some quotes from the end of the piece (but read the whole thing), following a description of how as a kid he had to hold his breath when passing through East Chicago/Whiting:
What could be worse? How about giving BP permission to increase dumping of sediment and ammonia into the lake, and entertaining U.S. Steel's request to continue its dumping in the Grand Calumet River? The Indiana Department of Environmental Management didn't see a problem with BP expanding its production capacity without expanding its water-treatment facility.

The ghost of James G. Watt strikes again. As secretary of the Interior, he was the Reagan administration's fox in charge of the environmental henhouse. Watt called for more mining, drilling and logging.

Well, Indiana has his clone. Thomas Easterly is his name, and he was appointed by Gov. Mitch Daniels because he was good at developing partnerships between industry and environmentalists. His top priority, though, is industry -- not the environment. After all, there will be 80 new jobs at BP, and its request slipped quietly through the approval process, just as Daniels wanted.

Now, however, outraged Illinois politicians are up in arms. Illinois congressmen have introduced resolutions criticizing Indiana and BP. Maybe with that kind of clout, Indiana will roll back this attack on our fragile environment. Maybe it can do something about this property tax problem, too.

Maybe I'd better not hold my breath.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 5, 2007 06:24 PM
Posted to Environment