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Portage City Council President Mark Oprisko has continued his call for a representative from U.S. Steel appear before the council at its meeting Tuesday, but it remained unclear Friday if the steelmaker will comply with the request.

Instead, Oprisko and Paul Vercher, government relations manager for U.S. Steel, have bounced e-mailed requests and responses to each other, Oprisko said. A company spokeswoman could not be reached for comment Friday.

The exchange comes weeks after the April 11 spill of hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen used in some steelmaking processes, from a broken pipe at the manufacturing plant into a ditch next to the company’s Midwest plant in Portage that feeds into Lake Michigan.

The spill temporarily closed four Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore beaches and the water intake facility for the town of Ogden Dunes and drew federal and state environmental agencies and media to the lakefront.

Federal regulations allow the release of some of the chromium into Lake Michigan in highly monitored amounts, but the spill raised alarms for residents and public officials.

On April 15, Oprisko e-mailed Vercher requesting he or another company representative appear before the council May 2. Instead, Vercher e-mailed a letter, citing “an extensive investigative effort, both internally and with appropriate government agencies, is underway” to determine the cause of the release and “help prevent future incidents of this type.”

Vercher also detailed steps the corporation is taking in response to the spill. Along with notifying the appropriate governmental agencies, Vercher said the company shut down all production processes for three days and took “additional steps to mitigate the impacts” of the spill. By April 17, the production processes using the chromium were back on line, with water sampling and visual inspections showing “no evidence of elevated hexavalent chromium levels,” Vercher wrote.

U.S. Steel takes “every incident very seriously” and promised to keep Oprisko and city officials informed of any developments.

Responding to Vercher, Oprisko maintained his call for a U.S. Steel representative to appear before the council, calling the spill “a serious disaster” affecting “hundreds of thousands of people that drink water from Lake Michigan.”

Oprisko also wrote U.S. Steel “owes it to the public to come out and speak on this issue.”

Michael Gonzalez is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.