An oil spill from U.S. Steel Midwest Plant was mostly captured by Thursday afternoon, but some did escape a containing boom after a sheen was spotted in Burns Waterway, an Indiana agency spokesman said Friday.
“IDEM continues to investigate the cause of this incident and the potential repercussions under the recently entered consent decree and state agreed order,” Indiana Department of Environmental Agency spokesman Barry Sneed said.
Water access at the adjacent Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk has since reopened, spokesman Bruce Rowe said. Burns Waterway is a Lake Michigan tributary.
After the latest spill, a nearby Ogden Dunes water treatment plant kept running, while intake monitors were watched, Indiana American Water spokesman Joseph Loughmiller said.
The steelmaker deployed a 120-square foot boom, while the oil did not appear to leak into Lake Michigan, U.S. Steel spokeswoman Amanda Malkowski said.
The spill was the second in less than two weeks — and just after a federal consent decree was finalized for a 2017 hexavalent chromium spill at the plant — a carcinogen made famous in the “Erin Brockovich” movie.
On Sept. 26, a “rusty”-colored spill was spotted leaching into Burns Waterway.
Iron solids leaked out of the plant after an operator accidentally put too much sulfuric acid into the wastewater treatment plant, according to IDEM documents.
Three dozen environmental groups from Indiana and Illinois decried that spill — including Alliance for the Great Lakes, Save the Dunes, Indiana Wildlife Foundation, Hoosier Environmental Council and Chicago-based Environmental Law and Policy Center. They called for more regulations and stricter penalties in an Oct. 1 letter to Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb.
“It is clear that Indiana’s system of water pollution control regulation is broken,” they wrote.
The latest industrial spill also drew sharp criticism from Chicago.
The Chicago Department of Water Management found no impact to its drinking water when it took water samples after the September spill, spokeswoman Megan Vidis said. However, it wants the steelmaker to notify it immediately of all spills it must report to regulators to protect its customers in the city and Illinois suburbs.
“U. S. Steel’s disregard for our region’s most precious natural resource is unacceptable,” she said. “Millions of Illinoisians rely on Lake Michigan as their water supply. We urge the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and U.S. EPA to respond urgently to this matter and to make protection of the lake from industrial pollution a priority.”
The latest spill comes several weeks after a federal judge approved a revised settlement with the company, more than four years after the Portage plant discharged wastewater containing a potentially carcinogenic chemical into the Burns Waterway.
U.S. Steel agreed to pay a $601,242 civil penalty and more than $625,000 to reimburse various agencies for costs associated with their response in April 2017 after the plant spilled 300 pounds of hexavalent chromium — or 584 times the daily maximum limit allowed under state permitting laws.
The Associated Press contributed.
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