[ Skafish ]

Another by-product of East Chicago.

Thomas The Air I Breath, Ways of Seeing

The economic downturn has some benefits for fence-line industrial communities.

View Outside My Window

It is becoming clear that Gitte Laasby is one of the most important journalist in Northwest Indiana. Here again she writes on a subject I am acutely sensitive towards.

via [ Post-Tribune ] “Lake County pollution bad despite reduction” By Gitte Laasby

New toxic release data from EPA shows Lake County industries released the ninth-most pollution in the nation in 2008 — more than 31.5 million pounds.

The high ranking, released Monday, comes despite a 31.1 percent reduction in releases from Lake County industrial plants compared to 2007.

The data, self-reported by the industries to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory, also shows that two Lake County steel mills are among the nation’s 50 biggest polluters.

U.S. Steel Gary Works is No. 37 with about 12.6 million pounds. ArcelorMittal in East Chicago is No. 46 despite cutting its releases by more than half, from about 25.8 million pounds in 2007 to 11 million pounds in 2008.

By comparison, BP Whiting increased its releases 33.8 percent from nearly 529,000 pounds in 2007 to nearly 708,000 pounds in 2008.

Among the 650 chemicals included in the data are carcinogens and other toxic material that cause adverse health effects and potential environmental harm.

Not all toxic releases are harmful or bad. The numbers include toxic material emitted into the air, discharged into water and disposed of in underground injection wells, but also materials that are landfilled or recycled.

A Post-Tribune analysis of preliminary TRI data published in September concluded that Northwest Indiana industries had reduced their overall pollution by about 30 percent. The most significant reductions were at area steel mills.

At the time, Branch Chief of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management’s Office of Pollution Prevention Jennifer Schick said the reductions were likely a result of production cuts rather than regulatory requirements or voluntary reductions.

On Tuesday, IDEM spokeswoman Amy Hartsock stopped short of drawing such a conclusion.

“Because an analysis has not been done for the 2008 data for Northwest Indiana, in particular, it would be speculation on our part to attribute reductions to the economic downturn,” Hartsock said. “What we do know based on information available to us for the state is that industry is doing a better job reducing pollutants than what the decrease in economic activity would account for.”

Lake County polluters reduced their releases by 31.1 percent compared to 2007, Porter County polluters by 5.8 percent. Lake and Porter counties released 36.9 million pounds of toxics — 17.6 percent of the total 209.3 million pounds released by Indiana facilities.

Four of the 20 counties in the nation that released the most toxic material were in Indiana, according to EPA.

Thomas The Air I Breath

via [ NWI Times ] “Dredging stirs airborne PCBs?”

SCIENTISTS: E.C. YOUTHS ALREADY HAVE HIGHER LEVELS OF POLLUTANT THAN IOWA SAMPLE

By Steve Zabroski

EAST CHICAGO | Children here already have significant amounts of polychlorinated biphenyls — PCBs — in their bodies, and researchers want to find out just how much more will accumulate when the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal is dredged.

Scientists with four major universities have been measuring concentrations of the toxic and carcinogenic chemical in the blood of participating West Side Junior High School students and their mothers since 2006 in anticipation of the dredging, now scheduled to begin in 2011.

“We’re here because of the dredging,” said David Osterberg, a researcher with the University of Iowa. “There are very high levels of PCBs in the canal, and when they are dredged, there will be very high levels in the disposal facility.”

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to remove some 4.6 million cubic yards of polluted sediment from the harbor and canal, and permanently store the material on a 275-acre former refinery site just 800 yards from Central High School and West Side Junior High.

Banned in the United States since 1977, PCBs typically enter the body by eating fish caught in contaminated waterways.

But the man-made substance also shows up in the bodies of those who never eat fish, and researchers think that the chemical, which readily evaporates when exposed to the air, could be ingested simply by breathing.

For four years, scientists have been collecting air samples taken in the students’ homes, at Central High and along the canal for comparison with a similarly sized community in eastern Iowa that has no known sources of PCBs.

Dubbed AESOP — Airborne Exposure to Semi-volatile Organic Pollutants — the study is sponsored by the National Institute of Environmental Health Science and combines resources of the University of Iowa, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Kentucky.

“People in East Chicago are very interested in what we’re doing,” said Jeanne DeWall, study coordinator. “They’re concerned about the dredging.”

Though Osterberg said the data from the 112 mothers and children participating in East Chicago are “very preliminary,” the amount of PCBs in the blood of the comparison group in Iowa appears lower than in the city.

“Generally, we’re seeing what we expected,” Osterberg said. “Mothers in East Chicago have higher blood concentrations of PCBs than their children, and in some cases, a lot more.” The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has determined that exposure to PCBs can cause cancer of the liver and biliary tract, and the chemical has been linked to problems with motor skills, a suppressed immune system and a decrease in short-term memory in children.

“We expect that both airborne and blood levels of PCBs in East Chicago will be higher once the dredging starts,” Osterberg said.

In the meantime, researchers are continuing their efforts to educate the community about chemicals in the environment and their effects.

“We’ve taught more than 400 kids, starting with seventh-graders, about PCBs,” said Dr. Victoria Persky, an internist at UIC and community outreach leader for the study. “It’s been a rewarding four years.”

Osterberg said he’s confident the National Institute of Health will fund the research project for another five years, and plans to have more air monitors in place when the dredging actually begins.

Nancy Morales, a registered medical assistant and phlebotomist, said she’s getting ready to collect the air monitors and visit residents again for their end-of-year blood samples.

Thomas Environment, The Air I Breath

As you can see I have been a skeptic of the EPA”s recent challenge to BP’s air permit.

<fb comment> a small victory. The EPA has order Indiana to rewrite the permit, essentially discrediting Indiana’s ability to manage their environmental resources. All I see this doing is fortifying a poorly written permit against future disputes. In the end BP is the beneficiary of the action</fb comment>

Noah Hall, author of the Great Lakes Law blog is beginning to clear me of my skepticism.

via [ Great Lakes Law ]

Tar sands oil gives coal some competition for the title of dirtiest fuel.  From mining to refining to burning, tar sands oil is an environmental disaster.  The Great Lakes is becoming a center for refining imported tar sands oil, which comes from western Canada.  As a result, refinery pollution is threatening our water and our communities.  BP’s Whiting Refinery on the shores of Lake Michigan in Indiana has become a focal point in the legal fight to stop tar sands pollution in the region.  Environmental groups scored a victory earlier this month when the EPA objected to an Indiana permit for air pollution from the refinery.  Meleah Geertsma, an attorney and public health expert with the Environmental Law and Policy Center in Chicago, was involved in the fight against the air pollution from the tar sands refinery, and wrote this guest post on the victory and what it means in the fight against tar sands pollution in the Great Lakes.

On October 16, in a move that could significantly improve air quality for the Great Lakes region, the U.S. EPA sent a clear message to the oil industry that the federal agency is serious about air pollution from refining – especially the processing of dirty Canadian tar sands crude. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on that day issued an order objecting to a permit granted by Indiana to BP’s Whiting Refinery, located on the shores of Lake Michigan. At the heart of Administrator Jackson’s order is a concern that numerous potential sources of air pollution are going uncounted and uncontrolled. And that the industry is ignoring or downplaying the air pollution impacts of processing the much heavier, dirtier Canadian tar sands crude, a crude that contains high levels of sulfur and toxic metals.

The BP operating permit was issued to enable a significant increase in the processing of heavy tar sands crude at BP’s Whiting, Indiana facility. However, the permit allowed BP to expand without installing so-called “best available control technology,” on the premise that increases in air pollution from the expansion would be balanced by decreases in pollution from the existing refinery. Such a trade-off of increases and decreases is referred to in air permitting as “netting.”

In response, several environmental groups and individual citizens filed a petition with U.S. EPA, asking the agency to object due to BP’s and the agency’s failure to count numerous potential sources of increased air pollution. Among these sources are increased operations of certain equipment needed to process larger amounts of Canadian crude, as well as greater levels of sulfur and toxics in the crude itself.

Great Lakes Law: Environmental groups and EPA step up the fight against tar sands oil refinery pollution in the Great Lakes.

Thomas East Chicago, Environment, The Air I Breath

via [ Post-Tribune ] “Cancer-causing levels of pollution exceeded by U.S. Steel landfill” by Gitte Laasby

GARY — Over the last two months, U.S. Steel has exceeded levels of possible cancer-causing air pollution near its hazardous waste landfill several times.

Its benzene and naphthalene repeatedly exceeded notification levels since mid-August at the landfill, which is also known as the Corrective Action Management Unit or CAMU.

“There may be eight exceedances or so in the past two months,” acknowledged Rick Menozzi, director of environmental remediation at U.S. Steel Gary Works at a citizens meeting this week.

“We did have an exceedance in residential monitoring along Ellsworth Street. All the others were what the recordings were at the CAMU.”

The CAMU is located east of Bridge Street and north of Interstate 90, across the Grand Calumet River from a residential neighborhood.

Monitoring stations are set up near the CAMU and in the neighborhood. The CAMU contains dredged sediment from the river.

In mid-October, the company measured high levels of benzene.

At one point, naphthalene levels were nearly double the notification level, but pollution remained well below action levels.

Company officials did not have an explanation for the exceedances, but said a possible cause could be that standing water makes materials in the CAMU settle and collapse.

“When a collapse occurs, there is a release of (volatile organic compounds) in particular. The naphthalene is being released as this material collapses. The monitoring station is right there where the collapsing is occurring,” Menozzi said.

At times, the company has applied powder-activated carbon to reduce emissions.

U.S. Steel recently asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for permission to landfill another 90,000 to 135,000 cubic yards of polluted sludge from a cleanup of two lagoons at the mill.

To do so, the company has submitted documents to prove to the EPA that the material is similar and compatible with the waste already in the landfill and that the landfill could handle it.

Company officials said a contractor visited the site this week to possibly bid on seeding the top of the CAMU to reduce emissions and water in the CAMU.

But cooling weather may not allow seeding right now, Menozzi said.

Thomas The Air I Breath

This story shocks and appalls me. It is insanity and unacceptable. Can you imagine the kinds of environmental practices that would be employed by U.S. Steel in a non-regulatory environment? And this was approved by IDEM without the public knowing. How much does the public not know and what other practices have been approved in the past?

via [ Post-Tribune ] “Polluted spray big surprise” by Gitte Laasby

GARY — For the past week, U.S. Steel has been spraying contaminated wastewater collected from the bottom of its hazardous waste landfill into the air over the landfill.

The landfill holds sediment dredged from the Grand Calumet River contaminated with mercury and possible cancer-causing pollutants, such as benzene, naphthalene and polychlorinated biphenyls. The 20-foot tall landfill is located within a quarter of a mile of residential neighborhoods.

The announcement was a shock to several attendants at U.S. Steel’s quarterly citizens meeting in Gary Thursday, who didn’t know about the project.

“This is what I would call a big surprise. And not a good one,” Save the Dunes member Charlotte Read said. “It sounds like it’s more air pollution for the neighborhood… It’s a zero discharge for water. It’s not a zero discharge for air. You’re recycling contaminated water one way or the other.”

U.S. Steel officials say the project is a pilot program that will continue until Nov. 30, with sprinklers running eight hours a day three days a week. The 16 spray heads sprinkle 250 gallons per minute or 112,000 gallons in a day.

Dorreen Carey, director of the Gary Department of Environmental Affairs, questioned why the citizens haven’t been told about the project before.

“Since it’s been on the drawing board, why not?” she said. “No one reviewed the potential impact of it. It’s not our expectation of how that part of the production is handled.”

U.S. Steel suggested the sprinkler system to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management because the company had periodical problems complying with ammonia levels in its wastewater permit when treating the water. IDEM approved.

“IDEM got back to us and said they didn’t have an issue, we’d be in compliance,” said Doug Boyea, manager of corrective action with U.S. Steel. “The actual retention time it (the water) has in the slag, the iron layer, takes out all the metals.”

Chuck Rice, a spokesman for U.S. Steel, said the company has not reported to IDEM what’s in the water.

“We are collecting analytical data. Emissions from sprinklers is — using worst-case scenario — ‘insignificant activity’” under on state law, he said.

Rice said leached water is sprayed within the berms of the landfill, which is known as a corrective action management unit (CAMU).

Rice said U.S. Steel is still monitoring air pollution around the landfill.

Polluted spray ‘big surprise’ :: Local News :: Post-Tribune.

Thomas The Air I Breath

I wonder to what extent the EPA’s recent order that “IDEM rewrite BP’s air permit” can be said to challenge IDEM’s ability to properly discharge its responsibility and manage the state’s environmental resources?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is forcing the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to rewrite part of the air permit for BPs Whiting refinery. EPA said BP?and IDEM left out several sources of air pollution that need to be counted when determining what kind of air pollution control equipment is necessary

EPA: BP permit must be rewritten :: Post-Tribune.

Thomas East Chicago, The Air I Breath

[ Community Global Monitor ]

Betsy Dent of Calumet Project with one of the Buckets

The Bucket Brigade is the brain child of Denny Larson of the Community Global Monitor. 

“The “Bucket Brigade” is a simple, but effective, tool that dozens of communities are using to find out for themselves what chemicals are in the air.  Armed with their own data and information about the health effects of chemicals, these communities are winning impressive reductions of pollution, safety improvements and increasing enforcement of environmental laws.

The “Bucket Brigade” is named for a easy to use air sampling device housed inside a 5 gallon plastic bucket.  The “Bucket” was developed in Northern California in 1995 by an environmental engineering firm in order to simplify and reduce the costs of widely accepted methods used for testing toxic gases in the air”

The Bucket Brigade was brought to East Chicago by the Calumet Project to help monitor the discharges from the construction of a confined deposal facility (CDF), the dredging of the Indiana Harbor Shipping Canal (arguably the most polluted waterway in the country), and the long term management of the site. They have also looked at BP discharges. 

[ Post-Tribune ]

A group of East Chicago residents hope to convince the government to do better air quality monitoring in their neighborhood and will lobby for better pollution control. 

The so-called Calumet Project Bucket Brigade took an air sample on July 10 near the intersection of 129th Street and Indianapolis Boulevard in East Chicago. The result was 14 chemicals. Five of them — acrolein, acrylonitrile, carbon disulfide, styrene and 1,4-dichlorobenzene — registered well above what other states list as “levels of concern.” 

Thomas Misc, The Air I Breath

[ Coal River Mountain Watch ]

Two opposing sides of America’s energy future are at war in the coalfields of southern West Virginia, an Aljazeera English People and Power Documentary.

Part I:  ”This is what we do in West Virginia”

 

Part II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHnhLoTz1hk

Massey Energy, a coal company, wants to mine Coal River Mountain using a surface mining technique called mountaintop removal, but local residents and environmentalists through acts of civil disobedience are trying to save the mountain in order to build a wind farm instead and mine coal underground.

This struggle at local level reveals a national conflict, confronting global warming while simultaneously stimulating the US economy.

Residents are hoping that Barack Obama, the US president, who criticised mountaintop removal as a presidential candidate, will intervene by banning the practice altogether, probably the only way the wind project on Coal River Mountain could prevail.

Downstream Strategies study on the economics of a Wind Farm vs. MTR mine on Coal River Mountain.
[ Full Report ]

The study makes a number of interesting conclusions:

• When externalities such as public health and environmental quality are factored in, a mountaintop removal mine ends up losing $600 million over its expected 17 year life. The costs of these externalities are taken in by the public in the form of health expenses and environmental clean up costs as well as lost resources, like ginseng and wild game. A wind farm would remain profitable over its life, forever.
• The Raleigh County Government would receive $1.74 million each year from the property taxes on a wind farm, whereas only $36,000 would make its way back to Raleigh County from the severance taxes on the coal taken out of Coal River Mountain. And the money from the wind farm comes in forever.
• A scenario where a local wind industry came to the Raleigh County was considered. In this scenario, over 1700 people would be employed at a local wind turbine production facility. A facility such as this would only be placed in an area where wind farms were going up.

Thomas Energy, The Air I Breath

[ NWI Times ]

CROWN POINT | The Hammond-based Calumet Project and the California-based Global Community Monitor, have notified BP Whiting Refinery of their intention to sue under citizen suit provisions of the federal Clean Air Act.

The potential lawsuit will press for penalties that could total more than $30 million.

Thomas East Chicago, Energy, The Air I Breath

[ Post Trib ]

By Gitte Laasby, Post-Tribune staff writer (The only legitimate Environmental Reporter in the Region)

For nearly six years, BP’s Whiting refinery emitted cancer-causing benzene at its wastewater treatment plant without proper air pollution control equipment, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

BP in Whiting cited for high benzene release :: Local News :: Post-Tribune.

There is a saying “You are what you eat.” But what about what you breath or drink?

What bothers me intensely about this report is that the USEPA allowed these releases to continue for six years before citing BP on such an egregious violation the of the Clean Air Act. That is six years to which MY NEW BORN CHILDREN were chronically exposed. And the USEPA knew every day that they were being exposed and did NOTHING. This is a toxin that we know one part per billion can cause cancer.

Additionally, during the permitting process for the BP Expansion these past several years the USEPA never disclosed these violations, but defended and promoted BP’s clean record of good environmental stewardship in the region. Consequently, East Chicago awarded BP $165 million in tax abatements. All while the EPA held evidence that BP was exposing the residence to such high levels of toxins.

UPDATE (On the Wire):

WASHINGTON | Members of Congress’ Great Lakes Caucus are asking the Environmental Protection Agency to review all of BP’s emissions after reports that the BP Whiting Refinery has been violating clean air standards.

In a letter, 18 members of Congress from Illinois, New York, Wisconsin and Michigan asked EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to closely examine BP’s emissions.

BP’s facility in Whiting is the largest oil refinery in the Midwest. Its critics say it also is a large source of pollution in the Great Lakes region.

MORE:View the EPA’s violation notice to BP.

Members of the caucus tell Jackson that the Great Lakes are “the crown jewel of our nation” and should be protected. They say the EPA should ensure that BP fully complies with the environmental protection laws and permits.

The EPA on Tuesday cited the Whiting Refinery for violating federal air standards by releasing a cancer-causing toxin in waste from 2003 to 2008, which at times reached 16 times the acceptable limit, EPA officials said.

I find it curious that there are no East Chicago Elected Officials asking for answers? Our Mayor and City Council represent the health and welfare of Citizens of East Chicago who live under the plumb of BP’s violations. And where is the voice of the City’s Health Commissioner on this issue? Of any population East Chicagoan’s are the most exposed and their children the most vulnerable - not the Residents of Illinois, Wisconsin or Michigan. And yet their representatives understand the gravity of the violation and the threat it poses to the health and welfare of the populations they represent. They are the ones asking for answer while East Chicago and Northwest Indiana Elected Officials remain silent.

Why the Silence?

This is a serious violation of the clear Air act and our Elected Officials ought to be associated with the asking for answers.

Thomas East Chicago, The Air I Breath