Sparrows Point

WEATHER: Winter weather advisory until 9 a.m., followed by more wind. TRAFFIC: Check our traffic updates for this morning's issues. TOP NEWS Cold snap, far from letting up, raises health concerns : Baltimore will enter its third consecutive day below freezing Thursday, prompting health officials to warn vulnerable residents of deadly conditions, even as the region prepares for treacherous travel.

Hundreds of people gathered on site and online Wednesday for the first public opportunity to buy the silenced remains of the Sparrows Point steel mill - from forklifts and slab haulers to cabinets and snowblowers. Among the hopeful bidders: welders, scrap dealers, equipment resellers and steel companies, some as far flung as Egypt and others just down the road. "We're doing some purchasing to help with our expansion," said Stacy Casey, project manager and bookkeeper for Tiemann Construction, a welding company near the mill.

Bankrupt RG Steel's unsecured creditors are seeking permission to sue Ira Rennert — the billionaire who created the company to buy Sparrows Point — for allegedly worsening the steel mill owner's financial situation in order to improve his own. The Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors told the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., that it might be able to recover more than $238 million if allowed to pursue claims against Rennert for...

It won't take much more than a few minutes into the new year to see the impact of the old one, with Baltimore's City Hall opening at midnight to begin performing same-sex marriages under a law that takes effect on Jan. 1. But if the state's newly expanded marriage law provides the most immediate dividing line between then and now, it was far from the only one. Looking back, 2012 emerges as a gatepost of a year, one that will be remembered for...

I read Dan Rodricks ' column about how to renew manufacturing at Sparrows Point, and I found his suggestion of putting a Berger Cookie factory on the site glib, inappropriate and insensitive to the many workers who lost their jobs. It was an idea that would only come from someone who didn't have family who worked down the point and who just doesn't get it. My father worked down the point for 50 years, as did my grandfather, and my brother just lost his job there when the plant closed.

The United Steelworkers Local 9477 has dreamed up a number of fictitious reasons for the demise of the mill at Sparrows Point ("Union's account of steel mill's end," Dec. 18). They have refused to admit, and The Sun seems afraid to say, that the real reason there will no longer be a steel mill at Sparrows Point stems from the fact that no corporation in the U.S. can make money in that business because of high labor costs due to union demands. Why are our shoes no longer made in the United States?

The five-pointed star, made of stainless steel and dozens of heavy-duty light bulbs, looks deceptively simple. Its symbolism is anything but. Not long after Bethlehem Steel built the Sparrows Point steel mill's massive "L" blast furnace in 1978, workers erected the "Star of Bethlehem" at the top - a reference to the longtime owner as well as to the nativity. The star has shone from on high in December ever since, its meaning slowly transforming from an eye-catching example of the steel mill's might to something deeper and more emotional.

One of the Sparrows Point owners broke its silence on the bidding process Thursday to rebut charges that it blocked potential operators from bidding on the steel mill, saying it "seriously considered" all companies with the means to make such a purchase. Hilco Trading, which bought the Baltimore County site with another company at an August bankruptcy auction, had set this Friday as the deadline for bids on all or portions of the property. But last week, the Illinois-based liquidator sold the facility's most valuable mill to steelmaker Nucor, reportedly for spare parts — ending all hope that the plant would be reopened.

For years, Jeff Mikula collected United Way donations from his fellow steelworkers at Sparrows Point. On Thursday, he - and 500 former co-workers from the now-closed plant - stood in line to receive them. The Dundalk man, who worked as an ironman for nearly 39 years at the mill, said accepting boxes stuffed by volunteers with chicken roasters and fixings for Christmas dinner was hard for the steelworkers, who were once among the charity's most generous donors in Maryland. "You see the need; you see what people are going through, the heartache," said Mikula, 57. "Steelworkers are proud people.

Several hundred former Sparrows Point workers gathering late Monday afternoon for details of their steel mill's demise heard from union leaders that at least two groups had wanted to restart the plant but weren't given the chance. Joe Rosel, president of United Steelworkers Local 9477 in Sparrows Point, told the crowd that Sherman International, an iron and steel equipment supplier in Pittsburgh, wanted to operate the plant and tried to bid $150 million for it last week. "They were told they couldn't bid because the plant wasn't for sale anymore," Rosel said.