July 22, 2010|By Timothy B. Wheeler, The Baltimore Sun
This is what progress looks like in cleaning up one of the most polluted industrial sites in the Chesapeake Bay region: A lone pump labors in a rubble-strewn field at Sparrows Point, making soft gasping noises as it siphons a thin stream of oily waste from underground.
The pump is one of the first put in by steelmaker Severstal North America to tap the huge plume of contamination underlying the 2,300-acre peninsula in Baltimore's harbor, where the dirty business of making steel has been practiced for more than a century. Brown liquid pulses through a clear plastic pipe from the pump into a small black holding tank.
Not far away, a drilling rig is poking more holes in the ground in preparation for another cleanup effort expected to begin soon. Plans there are to inject air into a toxic "hot spot" of benzene-tainted groundwater and suck vapors out of the soil laden with the carcinogenic chemical.
"We're trying to attack the source of the contamination," says Russell Becker, environmental manager for Severstal's Sparrows Point operation, "and recover as much of it as possible."
For some, those efforts are progress. But for others, they're short of what's needed to protect residents living nearby as well as the fish and wildlife that frequent the surrounding waters.
Two weeks after environmental groups and some area residents sued Severstal, contending that it is harming the environment and threatening neighbors' health, Becker showed a Baltimore Sun reporter and photographer around the steel complex. While declining to discuss the lawsuit, he explained what Severstal has done and plans to do to fulfill a 13-year-old "consent decree" requiring the mill's owner to reduce air and water pollution and clean up contaminated soil and groundwater.
That 1997 cleanup order was agreed to by the Point's owner at the time, Bethlehem Steel Corp., which later went bankrupt. The complex struggled through two more owners before Severstal bought it in 2008. While some neighboring residents say cleanup efforts dragged during the turmoil, Becker maintained that Severstal is taking steps to run a cleaner plant.
"We're striving, we certainly are," he said. "The commitment is there. ... We've been aggressively identifying issues and getting systems in place."
The company has agreed to begin "interim" cleanups of the groundwater contamination beneath the southwestern corner of the peninsula. That's where the plant once "cooked" coal in huge ovens to produce the coke needed to make steel from iron ore.
Shut down in 1991, the coke ovens have since been demolished. But some of the waste byproducts, including benzene and naphthalene, were spilled or dumped there while the ovens still ran and now linger in the groundwater. Government officials say tests show the contamination is seeping into the Patapsco River and into tributaries such as Bear Creek. Dundalk residents on the other side of the creek boat, fish, crab and even swim in those waters within sight of the steel mill.
The company has begun pumping out a layer of oil that's floating on top of the water table 10 feet or so underground. It's a painstaking process. The "skimmer" pump, powered pneumatically with compressed nitrogen gas, manages to extract just 10 gallons to 12 gallons of the light oil every day. It has recovered a total of 750 gallons since it began operating in March, said Becker, but there are about 10,000 gallons down there. He said he hopes to add three more skimmer pumps by week's end.
Becker said he also expects to have equipment delivered that will pipe air into the ground, extract chemical-laden vapors and burn them off. Crews are drilling the air injection wells and hooking up a network of pipes to collect vapors from an acre-size patch of land. Becker says he won't know how much benzene this prototype operation will remove until it's running, but he hopes it gets 5 to 10 pounds an hour.
The company also plans to try similar measures along the waterfront. On the eastern side, though, the ground is fouled with naphthalene and thick coal tar. There, Becker said, the company will try "bioremediation" — cultivating bacteria that will "eat" the contaminants, rendering them nontoxic.
At the northwestern corner of the complex looms Greys landfill, where similar contaminants have seeped into groundwater, though at lower concentrations, according to Becker. Though coke oven wastes are no longer dumped there, the landfill still receives about 500 tons daily of iron-laden sludge from the mill's wastewater treatment plant, as well as sludge collected by its air pollution-control equipment.
Greys landfill and another one by the demolished coke oven area have no liners to keep contaminants from seeping into the groundwater.
