IDEM Gets Berated By EPA, First It Was BP and Now US Steel, What Are They Thinking?

It was only a couple months ago that IDEM, Indiana Department of Environmental Management, was giving BP a pass on emissions of heavy metals, including mercury, into Lake Michigan. An immediate outcry from the public sector all around the Great Lakes drew attention to IDEM's plans and they were quickly squashed as BP had to give-in to protect what little integrity they had left after touting themselves as the "green" energy choice and then looking like big time polluters instead. That was then this is now.

Now it is IDEM and US Steel playing lets get lax with emission limits of sludge and heavy metals into our lakes. It is almost unbelievable; who comes up with these ideas? Do they think we are all stupid and won't care?

The outcry on this one is larger and rightly so. The Chicago Tribune ran an article Friday highlighting (or should it be lowlighting) some of the shennanigans IDEM has been playing with US Steel. It not only showed what their plans were for the future, it brought into focus what they haven't been doing for several years. Its as though they want to be exposed as incompetent; mission accomplished!

A few excerpts from the Chicago Tribune story on the subject.

Federal regulators are sending their Indiana counterparts back to the drawing board to ensure that the Gary Works, one of the largest polluters in the Great Lakes basin, cuts the amount of toxic chemicals and heavy metals flowing into a Lake Michigan tributary.

Responding to a Tribune story about a new water permit for the massive steel mill, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it has blocked the proposal, which would scrap, relax or omit limits on pollution the U.S. Steel Corp. mill dumps into the Grand Calumet River before it empties into the lake.
[...]
The letter, dated Oct. 1 but not made public until now, chided the Indiana Department of Environmental Management for giving U.S. Steel five years to limit several pollutants, including mercury, lead, cyanide, ammonia and a cancer-causing chemical called benzo(a)pyrene.

Federal regulators also criticized Indiana for failing to set more stringent pollution standards that would help clean up the Grand Calumet, one of the most contaminated waterways in the Great Lakes region.

"They have to do more to protect water quality," said Peter Swenson, chief of the water permits section in the EPA's Chicago office.
[...]
Federal law requires states to renew water permits every five years to meet the Clean Water Act goal of eliminating pollution. But Indiana hasn't reissued a permit for the Gary Works since 1994.
[...]
The latest fight about a Lake Michigan polluter comes three months after Indiana regulators gave a BP refinery in nearby Whiting permission to significantly increase pollution discharged into the lake, the source of drinking water for Chicago and scores of other communities.

Faced with a storm of public protest and threats of legal action, BP later backed down and promised to meet the more stringent pollution limits in its old permit.
[...]
"People in the Great Lakes region no longer are going to tolerate these attempts to look the other way or wait another five years for things to get better," U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in an interview. "It would be helpful if Indiana officials would get with the program and realize Lake Michigan shouldn't be a dumping ground."

If it wasn't so sad it would be funny. What were they thinking?