Everyone’s a Critic
IDEM is catching flack over its monitoring of US Steel’s water permit for its Gary, Indiana plant. The US EPA opened the issue up for public comments and over 300 comments: EPA’s U.S. Steel Gary Works page. Included in the comments were criticism of IDEM by the US Department of Fish and Wildlife Services:
In a letter, the Fish and Wildlife Service criticized IDEM for allowing too much cyanide to be discharged according to the proposed permit. The federal agency also urged IDEM to stop U.S. Steel from discharging visible silty materials into the Grand Calumet, saying biologists warned IDEM 20 times in 1993 about the alleged violations of the permit.“Every time we have visited this outfall site (by land or by boat) over the course of the past 15 years (hundreds of times), visible solids are discharged … into the Grand Calumet River,” Supervisor Scott E. Pruitt wrote in his comments. “These occurrences are violations … and should be ceased.”
Federal agency criticizes IDEM (Post-Tribune).
