INDIANAPOLIS | Three governors have come and gone since state regulators last updated long-expired wastewater permits for some of Indiana's largest industries, including the mammoth steel mills that line Lake Michigan.
Gov. Mitch Daniels made reissuing hundreds of outdated pollution permits a top priority upon taking office two years ago. But the effort has put state regulators in the crosshairs, with critics contending the Republican administration is giving breaks to employers -- first the BP Refinery in Whiting and now U.S. Steel Corp.'s Gary Works plant -- at the expense of the environment.
Gary Works, the largest fully integrated steel mill in North America, has for more than eight years operated under an expired wastewater permit that governs how much pollution the plant can release into the Grand Calumet River, an environmentally troubled tributary of Lake Michigan. The plant last received a new permit in 1994. It expired in 1999 and has been administratively extended since.
"If we wanted to give (U.S. Steel) a pass, administratively extending the old permit is the easiest way to give them a pass," said David Pippen, the governor's environmental policy director.
Indiana Department of Environmental Management officials this summer produced a new U.S. Steel permit reflecting federal laws that have grown more stringent during the past decade.
But environmental watchdog groups, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, contend the proposed state permit isn't strict enough.
EPA raises objections
"EPA is serious about its objections, and they do stop the permit from being issued unless or until those are resolved to our satisfaction," said EPA spokeswoman Anne Rowan. "It's good to have current permits, but we need those permits to be more stringent."
In a pair of letters delivered this month, the EPA argues the proposed U.S. Steel Gary Works permit would violate state law by allowing Gary Works to release more cyanide and heavy metals, including chromium, copper, nickel and silver. The federal agency also asked IDEM to explain why it proposed giving U.S. Steel another five years -- the full length of the new permit -- to meet stricter standards for several pollutants, including ammonia, cyanide and mercury -- a toxin responsible for many of the state advisories against eating locally caught fish.
"We're hopeful that we will be able to work through the points in the two letters so that a good quality permit is issued by the state," said Steve Jann, deputy chief of the EPA's wastewater permit division in Chicago.
Federal law requires IDEM to demand compliance as quickly as possible, so the state must better explain why U.S. Steel needs a five-year extension for some pollutants and spell out interim steps the company must take to reach eventual compliance.
"They're not blocking the permit," stressed Bruno Pigott, deputy commissioner for IDEM's Office of Water Quality. "They're just saying these are issues with the permit; we need you to help us understand them and respond to them."
Some explaining to do
The proposed Gary Works permit, considered the most complex in the state, would regulate four cooling-tower outfalls into Lake Michigan, 15 wastewater drains into the Grand Calumet River and the final outlet into nearby Stockton Pond. The dizzying 117-page document is difficult to decipher, even for the most sophisticated environmental stewards.
"We've spent decades of time and billions of dollars trying to improve water quality and bring our region's ecosystems back to health. The public needs assurances that the U.S. Steel permit is consistent with that goal," said Cameron Davis, president of Alliance for the Great Lakes. "You can't tell from looking at the permit."
Seeking to blunt those criticism, IDEM released a summary late Friday that shows the daily and monthly limits for most of the more than two-dozen pollutants Gary Works releases into the Grand Calumet River would stay the same or decrease under the new permit.
"We do not issue any passes on regulation," Pigott said. "There are no breaks given. There is no easing of rules."
IDEM officials say some of the pollution increases, including those for copper, lead and zinc, are tied to production gains, meaning the plant is producing more of the pollutant overall but the same amount per ton of steel product. At the same time, some limits for benzene, a cancer causing by-product of the coking process, would drop nearly 40 percent to reflect a corresponding drop in production at the plant's coke oven.
But benzene limits on other outfalls away from the coke oven were dropped, Pigott said, after years of monitoring showed that those drains were not releasing the pollutant in environmentally significant quantities.
Gary Works, the sprawling lakefront mill owned by U.S. Steel, released more water pollution in 2005 than any other industrial site, according to federal records. The plant is one of 12 major industrial facilities that have been operating under an expired state wastewater permit. There were 263 expired permit when Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels took office two years ago, including 67 major industrial permits. The backlog is now down to 33 permits, including the Gary Work permit state regulators are trying to renew.
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