Steel Mill

The effort to connect former Sparrows Point workers with training for new careers gained more urgency last week as the final hopes of the steel mill reopening were dashed - and as the deadline to apply for the help or forever lose it fast approaches for hundreds. More than 1,600 of the people laid off from the Baltimore County plant are eligible for federal "trade adjustment" benefits, which cover retraining costs and come with a stipend equal to unemployment benefits once those run out. Only half have enrolled.

A new marine terminal could bring 9,000 jobs to the Sparrows Point peninsula, Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz said Friday as he laid out the county's vision for remaking the land around its closed steel mill. A terminal in the peninsula's Coke Point area could take 10 to 12 years to become a reality, he said, and plans depend on the Maryland Port Administration's negotiations with the land's private owners, among other factors. The area has complicated environmental problems, but county leaders say the peninsula offers an exceptional location and the infrastructure to attract new investment.

The great steel mill of Sparrows Point is gone, and it's never coming back. Local, state and federal officials, along with union leaders, made a valiant attempt to find a new operator who would restart production there, but it was not to be. The plant's 12-year-old cold mill is being sold to a company that will disassemble it and use it for spare parts, and the rest of the complex will be razed to the ground. An institution that provided not just employment but an identity to a community, a factory that represented America's industrial and military might, is now just another relic of history.

Elmer Hall grew up in a small town with tree-lined streets, stores, churches and schools - and the largest steel mill in the world, which ran it all. Now that company town exists only in photographs and memories. Forty years ago, the then-owner of the Sparrows Point complex in Baltimore County began demolishing bungalows, rowhouses and everything else to make way for a massive blast furnace that still stands today. On Saturday, Hall and hundreds of other former residents gathered near the mill to see each other again - and to remember when work and life were intimately intertwined.

Joshua Polanowski was one of the first to go. He drove south in his 15-year-old GMC pickup truck, leaving behind freezing cold and a forever-closed steel mill for a balmy winter and a choice of manufacturing jobs. Forrest and Lacey Martin followed with their two daughters and pair of cats. Goodbye, Maryland. Hello, Texas. The demise of Sparrows Point and its 2,000 jobs last year has forced many life-changing decisions. For a small but growing number of workers, that change is an out-of-state address.

Environmentalists and residents sparred with state officials and the owner of the Sparrows Point steel mill on Friday over what's being done to curb air, water and soil pollution from the 2,300-acre industrial complex. Disputing complaints from environmental groups, a statement issued by Severstal North America Inc. said its steel mill is in compliance with a 12-year-old agreement to clean up contaminated soil and groundwater there. The company vowed to "vigorously defend" against the lawsuit that the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper organization have threatened to file alleging that the plant has done little of the remediation promised in 1997 and continues to pollute.

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...

The Sparrows Point steel mill experienced an outage late last week that caused the suspension of both the basic oxygen steelmaking furnace and the blast furnace, Bette Kovach, a spokeswoman for the mill's owner, RG Steel LLC, said Tuesday. Kovach said that customer orders would not be affected and that the plant was working to resume hot metal operations "as soon as possible later this week. " Kovach declined to provide additional details about the incident. RG Steel is a new subsidiary of the Renco Group, owned by financier Ira Rennert, which bought the steel mill from Severstal North America in March as part of a $1.2 billion deal involving three steel mills.

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 struggling Sparrows Point steel mill could be sold within the next six months, mill owner RG Steel said Monday. "We're not going to be specific at this time," said Bette Kovach, an RG Steel spokeswoman, as she confirmed comments by two company executives that potential buyers were eyeing the Baltimore County plant, as well as others owned by the firm. Speaking last week to the Baltimore chapter of the Association of Women in the Metal Industries, Jerry Nelson, RG Steel's chief commercial officer, said that "people have expressed interest" in acquiring some RG Steel plants and that "I think it's safe to say everything is on the table.