The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is calling out what it deems are more problems with a U.S. Steel Corp. draft wastewater permit, in a new letter sent Wednesday to Indiana regulators.
In a letter sent to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the EPA said it completed a review of the draft permit, and that the permit may not meet state water quality antidegradation rules. (Read the letter.)
The permit also fails to prove U.S. Steel is using the best technology to minimize pollution from its cooling water intake structures, as required by the federal Clean Water Act, according to the letter.
IDEM spokeswoman Amy Hartsock said the agency routinely works with the EPA on permit revisions.
"We will provide information and make changes necessary to make sure the permit meets the protective standards," Hartsock said in an e-mail.
U.S. Steel spokesman John Armstrong said the company would not comment on the permit.
Indiana and Illinois lawmakers, and several region organizations, sent letters Wednesday to the EPA's Chicago office, requesting the agency hold a public hearing to detail its concerns about the permit.
In his note to Regional Administrator Mary Gade, U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., urged a "constructive solution" to the permit process.
Visclosky expressed a desire to cut through political rhetoric and asked the EPA, "to explain the reasoning for the concern ... and the steps by which it will work with IDEM on revisions."
In their joint letter, Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin and Barack Obama and U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., encouraged the EPA to "consider the concerns of regional stakeholders."
A group of 12 environmental organizations, who called initial EPA challenges to the permit a good first step, suggest in a letter that the hearing be held in Gary.
EPA spokeswoman Anne Rowan said the agency will respond to the letters in writing. Rowan said there was no word yet on whether the agency will hold a hearing.
IDEM has called the draft permit -- updated to replace one that expired in 1999 -- more protective of the environment than the company's current permit.
By federal law, IDEM cannot issue U.S. Steel's permit with an outstanding EPA objection.
In its initial letter to IDEM, the EPA objected to how discharge limits were set for several pollutants that U.S. Steel would be allowed to spill into the Grand Calumet River, at a point before the waterway enters Lake Michigan.
The agency contested the permit's five-year schedule allowing U.S. Steel to achieve compliance for the discharge of chemicals including cyanide, copper, zinc, ammonia and mercury.
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