Great job everyone who wrote letters to the EPA to tell US Steel that more dumping of toxic chemicals is unacceptable! Here is a little info from the Alliance for the Great Lakes Website. Nice photo of the South End guys and girls as well!
The Alliance is part of a growing chorus registering concern about a state-proposed water pollution permit for a U.S. Steel plant in Indiana, its concerns among more than 300 comments submitted to federal regulators at the end of 2007.
Earlier, an estimated 300 people braved a December snowstorm in Gary to attend an EPA hearing on the proposed water quality discharge permit for U.S. Steel's Gary Works Plant along Lake Michigan.
The hearing was a response to numerous requests from environmental groups, the public and public officials critical of the proposed permit issued by Indiana's Department of Environmental Management. The same agency came under fire last summer for issuing a draft water pollution permit to oil giant BP for discharges into Lake Michigan.
Testifying at the Gary hearing, Alliance Board member Tina Rongers and Water Quality Program Manager Lyman Welch called for tighter pollution controls in the U.S. Steel permit. The permit governs how much pollution the plant - the country's largest fully integrated steel mill - can discharge into Lake Michigan, the Grand Calumet River and Stockton Pond.
"This flawed permit would reverse years of restoration efforts to improve Lake Michigan," said Welch. "Strong pollution limits need to be written into the permit now, so that we're not faced with a cleanup situation later."
Rongers called on EPA to protect the region's progress and investments toward environmental remediation and restoration along the Grand Calumet River and Lake Michigan shoreline, including U.S. Steel's own remediation and improvement work.
Noting the Alliance agrees with EPA's finding that the draft permit violates various aspects of the federal Clean Water Act, Rongers said, "It is everyone's duty to protect human health and the environment as required by law."
"Achieving balance between environmental quality and economic vitality requires us to recognize the importance and value of regional assets, whether it's a competitive firm -- like U.S. Steel -- or the Great Lakes," she said.
Welch objected to Indiana's proposal to grant U.S. Steel five more years to comply with federal water quality standards, and said the permit requires substantial reductions in allowable discharges of cyanide, chromium, oil, grease and thermal pollution to the Grand Calumet River.
EPA Region 5 spokeswoman Phillipa Cannon said the agency will prepare a response to some of the comments received during the comment period that closed Dec. 28, posting it on EPA's website once available. The agency is still exploring whether to post all of the public comments online, she said.
In the meantime, the public comments can be viewed in person at the Gary Public Library, 220 W. 5th St., Gary, Ind. For more information, visit the EPA's website at: http://www.epa.gov/region5/sites/ussteel/.
Gluehwein Party!
