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Thursday, November 16, 2006
Environment - "Mittal eyes sludge disposal"
"Mittal eyes sludge disposal: 1.1 million tons of sludge dumped on ground during past 20-plus years" is the headline to this story by Lauri Harvey Keagle in the NW Indiana Times. Some quotes:
BURNS HARBOR | While neither the state nor the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are requiring the plant to stop placing sludge contaminated with iron, oil and grease in wet piles on the ground, officials there say finding a better disposal option is simply the right thing to do."This is not the appropriate way to handle these materials," said Rob Maciel, environmental manager at Mittal. "It needs to be handled by today's standards."
For more than 20 years, the material from the secondary waste water treatment facility has been dumped directly on the ground at the plant, beginning when the facility was owned by Bethlehem Steel.
The material has accumulated to the 1.1 million tons sitting there today.
The plant is currently generating about 50,000 tons of sludge annually, taken from the waste water treatment plant to the piles on the ground in tanker trucks seven to eight times a day.
One option the company is exploring for handling the sludge is building a disposal facility on 170 undeveloped acres on the Burns Harbor property that could be as high as 85 feet tall, Maciel said. That property is wooded in some areas, with prairie grass and remnants of a dune as part of its features.
The steel mill itself is adjacent to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, with the property under consideration for the disposal facility sitting near the environmentally sensitive Cowles Bog.
During a tour of the plant for the company's Citizens Advisory Committee Wednesday, Maciel said if the site were to be used for a disposal facility, "the dunes that are there will essentially remain as a buffer."
"I'd rather see those things remain in place," he said. "That's the heritage of Burns Harbor."
Maciel said the sludge could be recycled in the company's sinter plant if not for the oil and grease content, which enter the material through the lubrication needed to operate large machinery throughout the steel plant's processes.
Some members of the Citizens Advisory Committee suggested the company work on ways to keep the oil and grease from entering the sludge in the first place, serving as a global model for other Mittal properties.
Removing those materials from the waste stream could be accomplished within a year's time, Maciel said, but would not be cost-effective for the company.
"You've got 1.1 million tons laying there now," said Tom Anderson, executive director of the Save the Dunes Council. "Even if you can find a way to alleviate the problem, you've got a waste management issue there that needs to be resolved right now even if you didn't produce another pound from this day forward."
The company's research and development group is currently taking samples of the sludge, the ground on which it sits and the property that could potentially hold the disposal facility.
Once those samples have been analyzed, the results and suggestions for handling the material will be presented to the Citizens Advisory Committee, likely sometime in late January or early February, Maciel said.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 16, 2006 09:38 AM
Posted to Environment