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Public Affairs coverage from our award-winning staff |
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Breaking the Molten
Produced by Michael Puente on Tuesday, December 11, 2007
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The blast furnace at U.S. Steel |
For more than a century, steel has been king in Northwest Indiana, especially in Gary. Steel brought jobs, and that made one of its byproducts, pollution, easier for regulators and even environmentalists to take. A meeting this afternoon in Gary may signal a major shift in that permissive relationship. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has scheduled a public hearing on whether U.S. Steel should get to discharge higher levels of pollutants into Lake Michigan.
The heart of any steel mill is its blast furnace.
ambi: inside a steel mill
It’s here that the heat is hotter than lava and where molten iron looks like hot butter pouring over popcorn.
U.S. Steel in Gary is one of the world’s largest steel mills. It’s burned hot for more than a century.
But these days, the heat generated inside the mill is nothing compared to the political heat U.S. Steel is getting, from Chicago all the way to Washington, D.C.
Lawmakers like Congressman Rahm Emanuel of Chicago and Illinois U.S. Senator Dick Durbin are just two who have slammed the company’s plans to discharge higher amounts of mercury and other pollutants into Lake Michigan and the Grand Calumet River.
EMMANUEL: We also want to meet with the executives of U.S. Steel.
DURBIN: You know, it troubles me why month after month we have to worry about the governor of Indiana asking for another permit to pollute this lake.
That kind of political heat isn’t just scorching U.S. Steel. It looks to be touching off change at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as well.
Until a few months ago, the EPA largely left requests for pollution discharge permits in the hands of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, also known as IDEM.
And IDEM appeared ready to grant U.S. Steel’s request to renew a 13-year-old permit, plus allow to increase its discharges of heavy metals including chromium, copper, nickel and silver.
But following pressure from lawmakers and environmental groups, the EPA stepped in.
It blocked IDEM from giving U.S. Steel the permit for now, and it scheduled today’s hearing to get some answers. Still, EPA officials are downplaying the idea that the hearing signals a sterner scrutiny on its part.
GADE: The United States Environmental Protection Agency holds a lot of public hearings. We’re very much interested in having the public give us their comments and opinions in the many of the actions we’re taking.
Mary Gade heads the EPA’s regional office in Chicago.
GADE: We do them whenever we have sufficient public interest on an issue and we certainly do in this situation.
In this situation, the EPA says it wants to know more about why Indiana would give U.S. Steel five years to comply with stricter federal regulations for discharges of cyanide, copper, zinc, ammonia and mercury.
Questions like that, and tonight’s public hearing, clearly irk IDEM’s top commissioner Tom Easterly.
In a letter to the EPA in October, Easterly asked why that agency hadn’t objected to 250 other permits Indiana has approved during the past two years.
If IDEM seems to be on the defensive, it’s no surprise. Earlier in the summer, Indiana officials were widely criticized for giving a permit to oil giant BP for its Whiting Refinery.
The permit essentially allows BP to discharge higher amounts of certain chemicals into Lake Michigan as part of a $4 billion expansion at the refinery.
FERRARO: That permit has been issued and we all got involved too late. We’re not too late on U.S. Steel.
That’s attorney Kim Ferraro. She lives in Valparaiso, where she runs the not-for-profit Legal Environmental Aid Foundation of Indiana. Ferraro says whatever is sparking the EPA’s involvement in U.S. Steel’s permit, she hopes it continues.
So does Dr. Ellen Szarleta, who teaches environmental issues at the Gary campus of Indiana University. It’s about two miles from the front gates of U.S. Steel where today’s EPA hearing will take place.
Szarleta says it’s time for more attention to be placed on all the industries in Northwest Indiana. And, she says, it’s okay if it comes from the Land of Lincoln.
SZARLETA: I’m not saying I just want scrutiny from Illinois but I think that we need to think of ourselves as working to improve the overall quality of life regardless of state boundaries. So, if we motivate Ohio to do something, that’s great, and if Illinois motivates us to improve our quality of life that’s wonderful, too, because we’re all sharing the same air and we’re all sharing the same water.
Still, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels says the quality of Indiana air and water is Indiana’s business, and he insists Lake Michigan’s quality is not being compromised by industry.
For her part, environmental attorney Kim Ferraro says there can be a healthy balance between industrial jobs that are so important to Northwest Indiana and a protected environment.
FERRARO: We all have to be good stewards of the environment. You wouldn’t want your neighbor dumping toxic pollutants in your yard or dumping trash in the streets. We all have to do our parts to protect the environment.
In recent weeks, U.S. Steel has mailed out flyers to people in Northwest Indiana. They tout the company’s financial investments and charitable contributions, as examples of its efforts to be a good neighbor.
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