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Monday, November 16, 2009
Environment - More on: Gary Post-Tribune alleges steel company gets special treatment because of IDEM commissioner
"'99 report raised concerns about waste, environment: No official inquiries in last 10 years on potential impact" is the headline today to engthy Pthe lart 2 of Gitte Laasby's story in the Gary Post-Tribune on special treatment by IDEM of a massive waste pile at Arcelor Mittal's Burns Harbor facility.
A second story today by Laasby is headed "Public records on waste missing." A quote:
When the Post-Tribune visited IDEM's Indianapolis file room in 2007, IDEM staff found at least 6 feet of paperwork related to Bethlehem Steel. But during a visit in mid-May 2009, IDEM staff found only 2 feet of documents. Others had a similar experience."I just went down and asked where the Bethlehem Steel files are," said Larry Davis, an ArcelorMittal worker and member of Save the Dunes Council. "It used to be anything to do with waste was never supposed to be purged. There used to be heaps of files. You'd spend a short lifetime down there going through a big company like that. None of that is on the virtual file cabinet. I don't know what happened to those files."
IDEM is scanning files from its archives into its searchable database online. During the transition, many files have disappeared from the archives.
"Prior to scanning records into the virtual file cabinet, all records were reviewed so that duplicative records and records past their retention schedule were not scanned. New records are added daily to the virtual file cabinet," IDEM spokeswoman Amy Hartsock said.
Hartsock said IDEM began entering documents into a virtual file cabinet starting with drinking water records and is still adding records for the air, land and water programs.
Yet, ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor appears to be the only Northwest Indiana steel mill for which only records related to air are available when one does search for the facility's name.
Searches for U.S. Steel Gary Works and ArcelorMittal's Indiana Harbor plant yield records about air, landfills, hazardous waste sites and water quality.
To find any information on ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor's proposed landfill, requestors have to search for "Deerfield Storage Facility" or a specific document number provided by IDEM staff.
However, even the company's landfill application doesn't address whether the company intends to landfill the waste.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 16, 2009 03:13 PM
Posted to Environment