Bay Foundation, EPA at Odds Over Steel Mill

Bay Foundation appeals Baltimore steel mill ruling

A federal judge's approval of a monitoring agreement between the owners of the Sparrows Point steel plant and environmental regulators is being appealed by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the environmental group announced Wednesday.

In March, U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz approved the agreement between RG Steel and federal [EPA] and state regulators [MDE]. Under the agreement, which followed a lengthy dispute over monitoring for toxic contaminants at the mill outside Baltimore, the company is required to sample sediments no more than 50 feet offshore. Environmentalists have argued contaminants have been found much further offshore.

The foundation said it was seeking a much more comprehensive assessment in Bear Creek and the Patapsco River near the hulking Baltimore County mill.

"All existing evidence indicates a broad belt of toxic pollution around the steel plant extending hundreds of feet into Bear Creek. The neighbors of the plant have the right to know what is in the water where they swim, crab and fish," said Kim Coble, vice president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. "We can't accommodate polluters at the expense of the public."

Yes, Baltimore Harbor is polluted over a wide area, by a large number of sources, including stormwater, shipping activity and other industrial sites, which is precisely why a broad scale monitoring plan is not warranted.  If you want to find changes that suggest recent pollution, you want to look for changes close to the steel mill.  Metals in particular, are notoriously particle reactive, and turn up in the sediments very close to site of release.

Frankly, in the environment of  Baltimore Harbor, I wouldn't hold out much hope for a monitoring program to find anything but a catastrophic release of metals.  Concentrations in the sediments there are already so high, and so spatially variable, the chance of a minor release being observed as a statistically significant increase in the sediments is very low.

I suspect the Bay Foundation simply wants the steel mill to pay for a wide spread monitoring program as a punitive matter, and as a way of identifying other offenders it can go after as well (as there almost certainly are.

The Maryland Department of the Environment issued a statement saying the current plan could lead to further sampling.

"MDE's and EPA's teams of toxicologists, geologists and engineers are in complete agreement that the court approved off-site sampling plan will achieve its goal. The goal is to develop a final human health and ecological assessment which will then lead to the development of a clean-up plan," the statement said. "If there is reason to believe that a plume extends beyond 50 feet, the agencies would direct RG Steel to conduct additional sampling."

The federal judge ruled last year that a prior owner wasn't responsible for pollution that occurred before Bethlehem Steel's 2003 bankruptcy sale of the mill, but current owners could be required to study offshore pollution.