U.S. Steel sought to keep chemical spill secret: documents

PORTAGE, Ind. — Environmentalists are questioning why the public wasn’t notified about an October chemical spill into a Lake Michigan tributary that U.S. Steel asked Indiana regulators to keep confidential.

Documents released by the University of Chicago’s Abrams Environmental Law Clinic show that U.S. Steel’s plant in Portage released 56.7 pounds of chromium on Oct. 25 after a wastewater treatment system malfunction. That’s nearly double the 30 pounds that the plant is permitted to release of the potentially cancer-causing chemical over 24 hours.

A company official wrote to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management on Oct. 31 asking that its submission about the release “be afforded confidential treatment under all applicable statutes.”

Law students at the University of Chicago obtained the letter while tracking pollution violations at U.S. Steel and other factories along Lake Michigan as they prepare a planned lawsuit accusing the Pittsburgh-based company of repeatedly violating the federal Clean Water Act since 2011.

The same plant released nearly 300 pounds of hexavalent chromium in April because of a pipe failure, prompting closure of nearby Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore beaches and a drinking water intake for some communities in the area.

U.S. Steel said in a statement Tuesday it promptly communicated with the Indiana environmental agency on Oct. 27 about the second spill “and continues to work to ensure that there is no environmental impact.”

Unlike the April spill, U.S. Steel didn’t report the latest incident to the National Response Center, a warning system overseen by the U.S. Coast Guard to alert local authorities about oil spills and chemical releases.

“The October spill wasn’t serious enough to merit reporting “and did not pose any danger to water supply or human health,” U.S. Steel said.

The Indiana environmental agency is reviewing the case, but excessive chemical releases typically don’t require spill notifications, spokesman Barry Sneed said. An EPA spokeswoman agreed that the chromium release “does not appear to exceed” regulations and “would not have to be reported.”

Mark Templeton, director of the Abrams Environmental Law Clinic, said they dug into the case last year when a group of surfers — some suffering from rashes and gastrointestinal issues — reached out to the group to find out about Lake Michigan’s water quality. Students combed through thousands of industrial facilities’ public records and uncovered U.S. Steel’s violations, Templeton said.

Making the Oct. 25 discharge more disturbing was the fact that dozens of people were on the water near U.S. Steel on an unseasonably warm autumn day, and the company never spread the word, Templeton said.

“These are beautiful areas, and they’re entitled to as much or more protection than industrial entities,” he said. “The attitude of ‘We didn’t have to tell people’ is sorely telling of the corporate tendency to curb regulations.”

Contributing: Mitch Armentrout