By Christine Kraly, Times of Northwest Indiana Staff Writer
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Region 5 office will hold a public hearing on its objections to a U.S. Steel Corp. wastewater discharge permit, the agency announced.
The Chicago office of the EPA will hold the hearing in Northwest Indiana in mid-December, the agency said, in response to public interest in the federal government's objections to the Gary-based company's permit.
The EPA formally opposed the steelmaker's permit last month. In its initial letter to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, 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.
IDEM cannot issue the company's permit until all EPA objections have been resolved.
The EPA also is allowing people to submit additional comments on the permit at the hearing and during a public comment period.
Indiana and Illinois lawmakers, and several region organizations, sent letters to the EPA's Chicago office, requesting the agency hold the public hearing to detail its concerns.
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.
In a statement released Thursday, EPA Regional Administrator Mary A. Gade said the agency will hold the hearing, "because U.S. Steel Gary Works is one of the largest steel mills in the country and there is tremendous public interest in how it affects the environment."
The EPA will announce the time and location of the hearing at least 30 days before the meeting.
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