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Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Environment - "'Easterly's pile' a waste site, after all"

Remember this ILB entry from April 12, 2010, quoting a Gary Post Tribune story where IDEM denied the existence of "Easterly' pile" and called the location on an aerial photo taken by the paper simply "a hole"?

Today Gitte Laasby of the Post Trib reports:

BURNS HARBOR -- After months of stern denial by top officials, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management admits "Easterly's pile" is not a hole in the ground after all.

In fact, the waste area at the northeast corner of ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor plant -- named after Indiana Department of Environmental Management Commissioner Tom Easterly -- consists of a 900 foot long and 67 feet tall pile of basic oxygen furnace sludge and rubble interspersed with burnt lime. IDEM estimates the "BOF farm" consists of 274,000 cubic yards of waste of which 16,000 cubic yards is rubble.

The waste has been dumped a couple of hundred feet from Lake Michigan and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore longer than the six months law allows. Piles of brick and rubble have been dumped at the lakefront nearby for at least five years.

So says the IDEM in an inspection report based on visits by four IDEM staffers to the facility on March 10 and 11 and April 19. The report also contains photos of the waste. The Post-Tribune obtained the report through a public information request.

The newspaper first reported the open dumping on Nov. 15, 2009, but as late as a month ago in an interview with the Post-Tribune, IDEM Chief of Staff Kent Abernathy and Scott Nally, assistant commissioner of IDEM's office of external affairs, referred to the area as "a hole." * * *

[Valparaiso attorney Kim Ferraro of the Legal Environmental Aid Foundation of Indiana] said the dumped waste still contains pollutants like selenium and cadmium that shouldn't be sitting out in the open.

"They shouldn't be putting this next to the lake. That's just mind-boggling to me. You have five square miles (of property), you have to do this 200 feet from Lake Michigan, without covers, without berms, without any environmental controls," she said.

Ferraro noted that IDEM staff still hasn't tested the dumped waste, but relies on samples from ongoing processes and test results that Bethlehem Steel submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1999.

ILB: Here is a link to the inspection report and cover letter.

Sarah Tompkins of the NWI Times had this story about the report yesterday. The headline: "IDEM report confirms waste piles at ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 28, 2010 08:43 AM
Posted to Environment