Steel Plant

It's been years since the owners of Dundalk's Costas Inn had to do little more than cash paychecks and ladle out the beef and gravy to attract the crowds. But the North Point Boulevard restaurant and bar still counts on the hungry steelworkers from down the road. So, when general manager Nick Triantafilos heard yesterday that the U.S. Department of Justice had ordered the sale of Mittal Steel Co. NV's Sparrows Point plant, he was concerned. "Our bread and butter is still the lunch crowd," said Nick Triantafilos, whose parents opened the restaurant in 1971.

The night his father left for the fishing boats on the Atlantic, the boy cried. His grandmother thought he just missed his daddy, but she was wrong. At 12, the boy had been appointed man of the house. He worried about getting the work done.His family didn't have running water, so he hauled buckets from the well. He gathered firewood, milked the cow, fed the chickens and hogs, and he followed his mother to a place where he shucked oysters for two hours before leaving for school.The boy grew into a man who dreamed of simple things.

The 1.8 million drinking, showering, cooking, dish-washing residents of metropolitan Baltimore typically use about 300 million gallons of water every day.Bethlehem Steel in Baltimore County uses that much water every day.This is a lot of water. Three hundred million gallons would fill Oriole Park to the brim and dump 80 million gallons of overflow onto Russell Street.It would fill the Ravens' PSINet Stadium. Twice.As Marylanders and others across the parched mid-Atlantic states are playing golf on thirsty fairways and letting dirt become permanent features of their cars, Bethlehem makes quite a case study in water consumption.

About 400 pounds of trouble was forged into steel yesterday when more than 300 illegal guns were melted down in a Bethlehem Steel furnace at Sparrows Point.The guns had been confiscated by the Maryland Department of Transportation police and the Baltimore County Police Department -- two of dozens of law-enforcement agencies that regularly use the 3,100-degree, three-story furnace to dispose of unwanted guns, said Bethlehem Steel spokesman Ted Baldwin.The furnace is used by agencies including the Treasury Department, the CIA and police in Baltimore, Anne Arundel, Montgomery and Prince George's counties.

Altogether, the three African-American Steelworkers talking about the bad old days worked more than a century down at the Bethlehem Steel Sparrows Point plant.Worked. Labored. Through long years of disdain and discrimination and disappointment."See, they had two jobs down there: white jobs and black jobs," says Earl L. Fields, 73, who spent 39 years at the Point."All the dirty jobs," he says. "Unload cars with shovels. Plain, hard labor. The worst jobs, the dirtiest jobs, the nastiest jobs, you name it. In other words, they were black jobs."

Exactly a year after Gov. Parris N. Glendening cited a $1.2 million state grant for Avesta Sheffield East as an example of the state's ability to help create jobs, the Baltimore County stainless steel plant cut 100 jobs yesterday -- almost half its work force.Stockholm, Sweden-based Avesta Sheffield AB received the state "Sunny Day" grant for training and equipment in March 1995, after it acquired the former Eastern Stainless Corp. from Armco Inc. In return, the new owner pledged to boost employment at the Essex plant from about 200 to 350.Chuck Porcari, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, said the state has no legal right to recover the grant money.

The steep slope on a graph in a Sparrows Point conference room charts the decline of the Bethlehem Steel plant -- from 30,965 employees in 1960 to 7,500 in 1988.On a table beneath a huge aerial photograph of the once bustling "Point" is a symbol of trouble ahead -- the annual report of rival Nucor Corp., whose new South Carolina plant will make half the steel with one-tenth the employees.Amid signs of difficulty past and future, mechanic Andrew Bates III plays Zodiak, a sort of souped-up version of Monopoly intended to teach Steelworkers about corporate finance -- from deadbeat customers to demanding investors.

For Bethlehem Steel Corp., which saw its first-quarter profits washed away by snow and rain, skies appear clear -- thanks to strong demand and an outage at a rival's huge plant.The question is how long the skies will stay clear.Just beyond the horizon is a man-made maelstrom. Approaching: a deluge of low-cost steel from minimills and a tougher international climate that could mean more imports and fewer exports.That means Bethlehem Steel, which invested $1.6 billion and cut 13,500 jobs over the past two decades in eastern Baltimore County alone, has no time to rest.

In a push to make its steelmaking operations more efficient and accountable, Bethlehem Steel Corp. is on the verge of creating two separate companies to operate its Sparrows Point plant in Baltimore County and its Burns Harbor, Ind., steel mill.The creation of a semi-autonomous Sparrows Point operation could be a boon to the Baltimore area, as it would shift much of the unit's decision-making process from the Bethlehem, Pa., headquarters to Baltimore County.Bethlehem spokesman Henry Von Sprecklesen said yesterday that the company has been working on plans for the transformation for several months.

Union officers at Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s Sparrows Point plant say safety conditions have suffered from manpower reductions by the company in recent years, but may not have contributed to the accidental death of a steelworker this week.Cutbacks among the crews that clean the plant and maintain equipment are making the work environment more dangerous, they say, while high rates of overtime are contributing to worker fatigue that can lead to accidents."From 1986 on, they've just continued to take a turn for the lean and mean," said Leroy R. McClellan, grievance committee secretary for Local 2609 of the United Steelworkers of America.

The Severstal steel plant at Sparrows Point has been cited for multiple air pollution violations over the past year, and an investigation is under way of a furnace fire Sept. 29 at the Baltimore County facility, a state spokesman said Friday. The Department of the Environment notified the Michigan-based steel company Sept. 24 that it faces unspecified civil penalties for emitting excessive amounts of potentially harmful chemicals from one of the plant's operations in September and October of 2008, and again on June 25 of this year.

Russian steelmaker OAO Severstal, which closed on an $810 million deal to buy Sparrows Point in May with promises to invest significantly in the steel plant, said its first major project will be to upgrade the blast furnace. The $10 million renovation will begin in late summer and the blast furnace, which creates raw steel from ore, would be shut down for about 14 days. It was unclear what would happen to employees during the shutdown. The upgrades would allow the plant to produce more steel and in turn increase profitability, the Severstal executives said.

Seventeen years after the smoke-belching coke ovens at Sparrows Point were shut down because of chronic pollution, the plant's new owner is considering a new plant at the sprawling Baltimore County steel mill, a move that would mean new jobs and help cement its future but is also likely to raise concerns in a community tinged with memories of black soot and foul air. The Russian steel company Severstal, which completed an $810 million deal to buy the...

Russian steelmaker OAO Severstal, the new owner of Sparrows Point, submitted a $670 million offer yesterday for West Virginia steel company Esmark Inc., whose own bid to buy the Baltimore County steel mill collapsed in December. Severstal's bid comes just two weeks after it closed its $810 million purchase of Sparrows Point from ArcelorMittal and days after it agreed to buy an Ohio steelmaker. If successful, it would bring Sparrows Point and Esmark's money-losing Wheeling-Pittsburgh plant under the same corporate banner - a move Esmark had planned to make.

Russian steelmaker OAO Severstal completed yesterday its $810 million acquisition of the Sparrows Point steel mill from ArcelorMittal with plans to invest significantly in the Baltimore County plant and rev up production. Sparrows Point management and labor expressed excitement and hope that the Severstal deal will shore up the future of the 119-year-old plant, which becomes a key part of Severstal's plans to expand in the United States. The plant, which employs 2,500, has languished under a succession of owners, leaving workers anxious about whether it can remain competitive.

The Department of Justice approved yesterday the sale of the Sparrows Point steel plant to Russian steelmaker OAO Severstal. "The division has granted its approval to the Trustee's proposed sale of Sparrows Point to Severstal," Gina Talamona, a spokeswoman for the department, said in a statement. Severstal announced last month that it had agreed to buy the 119-year-old Baltimore County plant, which employs 2,500, for $810 million in cash. The government-ordered sale was overseen by a trustee appointed by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Russian steelmaker OAO Severstal said yesterday that its acquisition of the Sparrows Point complex could close as early as mid-May and that it plans to rapidly ramp up production at the Baltimore County steel plant. Severstal plans to bring plant production up to full capacity of 3.6 million tons a year, company executives told analysts during a conference call from Russia. The plant shipped 2.3 million tons last year. Current owner ArcelorMittal has operated Sparrows Point as a swing plant, with output fluctuating with market forces.

Russian steelmaker OAO Severstal announced yesterday that it is buying the steel plant at Sparrows Point and says it plans to run the mill at full capacity and invest up to half a billion dollars during the next five years to improve productivity. Severstal, led by a Russian billionaire who is one of the world's wealthiest men, emerged as the successful bidder in the government-ordered sale, saying it will pay $810 million in cash for the Baltimore County plant. An agreement with an earlier buyer that would have paid Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal $1.3 billion for the plant collapsed over a lack of financing.

A deadline to complete the sale of Sparrows Point came and went this week, further dragging out a resolution of the Baltimore County steel plant's fate. Mittal Steel Co. NV of the Netherlands is under orders by the Justice Department to sell Sparrows Point to resolve antitrust issues related to its merger with Luxembourg-based Arcelor SA. Investment group E2 Acquisition Corp., led by Esmark Inc. of Illinois, agreed in August to buy the plant for $1.35 billion -- and the two parties have been trying to seal the deal ever since.

State environmental officials have ordered the company that operates the steel plant at Sparrows Point to take steps to contain an industrial grit that has been raining on southeastern Baltimore County neighborhoods. Responding to complaints about the airborne steel-making byproduct known as kish, the Maryland Department of the Environment found International Steel Group-Mittal Steel N.V. in violation of air emissions regulations. The first step ordered by environmental officials would require the company to repair holes in a building that is to contain the material but was damaged by an explosion last summer.