via [ Post-trib ] “Toxicity of pile remains undetermined at site - New test results show waste more toxic than first indicated” By Gitte Laasby

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It ought to be noted that Tom Easterly, IDEM’s commissioner, served as Superintendent for Environmental Services at Bethlehem Steel’s Burns Harbor division. Additionally James Flannery the Executive Director of the Northwest Indiana Quality of Life Council (I can feel the irony), served as the Environment Manager for AcelorMittal and continues to serve on the State of Indiana’s Water Pollution Control Board. Jim also served as Board President for the East Chicago Waterway Management District (E.C.W.M.D.) while I served as it’s Executive Director (how all things lead back to East Chicago).

* The E.C.W.M.D. oversees the Indiana Harbor Shipping Canal (IHSC), the most polluted waterway in the country surrounded by ArcelorMittal, by far its largest user. After more than 35-years since the Clean Water Act was enacted there has never been a project to clean up the waterway. The only project initiated is an USACE project to dredge the canal for navigational purposes only.

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BURNS HARBOR — More than a year and a half after ArcelorMittal first applied for a landfill in Burns Harbor, the company has not disclosed the toxics in all the waste to be landfilled.

The waste — also known as Easterly’s Pile — has been dumped in piles up to three stories tall on open ground a couple hundred feet from Lake Michigan and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore for more than a decade.

What is certain is that some of the waste destined for the landfill is more toxic than ArcelorMittal first indicated.

New test results obtained by the Post-Tribune show the waste is one step short of being considered hazardous because of high contents of lead and cadmium.

Cadmium is a carcinogen and can hinder brain development in children. Lead exposure can lead to health problems in young children, including learning disabilities, lower IQs and delayed development.

When ArcelorMittal first told state and Burns Harbor officials what it intended to landfill, test results showed the waste was not one but two steps away from being hazardous.

“We know that they initially only identified … the lesser toxic waste that would be going into the landfill that’s currently open-dumped out on the facility,” said Kim Ferraro, an attorney with the Legal Environmental Aid Foundation of Indiana in Valparaiso. “Yet, what we now know is that the most toxic (kind) of solid waste has been sitting out very close to Lake Michigan and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore on open ground, open to the air, so lead can potentially leach into the lake, into the groundwater, every time it rains. That’s concerning.”

The latest test results showing high levels of lead and cadmium were of blast furnace filter cake and RSB final thickener sludge. Samples were verified by IDEM in a letter on Jan. 25. They were taken directly from the mill, not stockpiles, IDEM spokeswoman Amy Hartsock said.

ArcelorMittal had already submitted test results from a million tons of wastewater treatment plant sludge that the company stockpiles and previously recycled.

What is still missing, Ferraro said, are test results from a heaping mound of a metallic-gray pile up to 35 feet tall spread across a 33-acre sandy area in the northeast corner of the company’s property.

ArcelorMittal representatives have referred to the waste as “Easterly’s Pile” after Tom Easterly, now IDEM commissioner, who was the top environmental manager at one of ArcelorMittal’s predecessors, Bethlehem Steel Corp., from 1994 to 2000.

Under Easterly’s watch, Bethlehem reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1999 that it had stopped recycling 14 years earlier but still had treatment plant sludge and other waste sitting in the open.

IDEM needs to know how toxic any waste is to determine how environmentally protective the landfill should be.

In November, the Post-Tribune published sampling results from Easterly’s Pile from 1999 that showed levels of lead were high enough to require the most restrictive landfill type. In response, critics including Ferraro encouraged IDEM and EPA to resample the piles rather than relying on faulty samples that Bethlehem Steel submitted to EPA in 1999 and on which EPA based its conclusion that the waste posed no significant harm to the environment. IDEM relies on that decision to determine how toxic the waste is.

Last summer, Jose Cisneros, chief of the Remediation and Reuse Branch at EPA Region 5, questioned the validity of some of Bethlehem’s 1999 test results of another waste pile, saying more waste could have been deposited in the piles since it was first sampled.

“If the only sampling of the pile for the permitting of the proposed landfill was done by the company then I am not sure how confident we can be about its results,” he wrote.

Higher standard than needed

ArcelorMittal has not answered questions about what’s in the waste in Easterly’s Pile. But from the beginning, the company proposed building a landfill that meets stricter standards than the law requires for the wastewater treatment plant sludge.

“The Deerfield Storage Facility will be a state-of-the-art facility that exceeds the minimum protective requirements set forth by law for a Type I restricted solid waste landfill. Both the proposed liner system to protect groundwater and the final cover on the landfill exceed regulatory requirements, increasing the storage facility’s environmental integrity,” company spokesman Adam Warrington said in an e-mail on Dec. 3.

Ferraro questioned why the company proposed building such a protective landfill before any official test results showed it was necessary.

“Either they already knew (it was more dangerous) and they weren’t being honest with the public or it was out of the goodness of their hearts — and I don’t believe (the latter) for a second,” Ferraro said.

Warrington refused to answer questions as to why the company proposed to build a landfill to higher standards than required, whether the new test results would change the design or monitoring requirements for the landfill, and whether the company plans to take any precautions to prevent pollution from stockpiled waste from leaking into groundwater or Lake Michigan. He also refused to answer whether all types of waste to be disposed of in the landfill have now been analyzed.

IDEM’s Hartsock said IDEM staff has visited ArcelorMittal since a public hearing on the landfill on Dec. 2, but did not elaborate on why.

“Industrial compliance staff members visited the facility for a site inspection. When the inspection report is completed, it will be made available for public review” in IDEM’s online database, she said in an e-mail.

IDEM and ArcelorMittal are still exchanging information that IDEM needs to issue the landfill permit.

Hartsock said the public will not be given another opportunity to comment on the permit, but that IDEM will let people know who submitted comments on the permit application or requested notification about the final decision once the agency has issued a permit. The notice will include instructions for filing an appeal with the Office of Environmental Adjudication, which reviews IDEM’s permit decisions.

Thomas The Land I Use, The Water I Drink