The owner of the steel plant at Sparrows Point has moved to create an industrial-waste landfill on the contaminated Baltimore County peninsula, even as the company takes long-awaited first steps to clean up toxic waste seeping into the outer harbor and tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay.
Severstal North America applied last week to the Maryland Department of the Environment to develop a 60-acre landfill adjacent to one of two old waste-disposal mounds on the 2,300-acre complex that nearby residents say is the source of noxious odors that can force them indoors.
The new waste-disposal site is meant to replace Greys landfill, now more than 100 feet high, which is expected to reach capacity in three to five years, Russell Becker, the company's environmental manager, told residents Thursday night at a public meeting in Edgemere.
Meanwhile, federal and state regulators, said interim remediation work started this week on the first of six toxic hot spots, or "cells," where the company intends to begin removing and treating a huge plume of benzene and naphthalene in groundwater beneath the plant's long-closed coke ovens. Benzene is a carcinogenic component of petroleum, and naphthalene a byproduct of coal tar that can cause anemia and other health problems.
Work on all six areas should be under way by this time next year, said Andrew Fan, Sparrows Point cleanup coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency. He said initial extraction equipment should begin removing several thousand gallons of contaminants per year, compared with what he called a largely "symbolic" pump installed earlier that had extracted only 20 gallons in six months.
Word of the company's bid for a new landfill angered some residents and their representatives, who have long fumed over the lack of progress in cleaning up extensive contamination at Sparrows Point under a government-enforced agreement reached 13 years ago with the prior owners of the steel mill.
They also expressed impatience with the pace of the cleanup, particularly delays in assessing the risks that decades' worth of pollution pose to them and to fish, crabs and other aquatic life.
The company has completed soil and other sampling to determine the extent of land-based contamination but is disputing its responsibility to deal with any wastes that have seeped into surrounding waters.
"I don't care who pays what, but I want it fixed," said Bill Pribyl, who lives across Bear Creek from the plant. He called the dispute over offshore sampling "very frustrating."
"Where's the urgency?" he asked. "How do we speed this up?"
Residents and environmental groups threatened last year to file a pair of lawsuits, one seeking damages and the other to force a more aggressive cleanup schedule.
Louis Konopacki, another Bear Creek resident, expressed dismay over the proposed landfill, given the odors that he says afflict the neighborhood from Greys landfill, which rises above the trees.
"Sometimes you can't even go out of your house because of the smell," he said.
"I hope to live long enough to see it capped," said Gloria Nelson, representing Turners Station, a community across the creek from the landfill, many of whose residents once worked at the steel plant. She complained that they had not been promptly informed of contaminants leaching from the landfill.
Mitch McCalmon, deputy land management director for the Maryland Department of the Environment, acknowledged lapses in communicating with residents but said officials are pressing to complete their study and get cleanup work under way. The plant reduced air pollution in the first few years after the 1997 consent decree was signed, he said, and took steps to curb leaching of contaminants from landfills. But progress slowed as the plant repeatedly changed ownership.
McCalmon told residents that the company's bid for a new landfill was "not a done deal," though he suggested it might speed closure of the old ones. No hazardous wastes would be put in the new landfill, he said, and it would be lined to keep contaminants from getting into groundwater.
Meanwhile, Severstal has announced plans to halt production Thursday at Sparrows Point, idling several hundred workers for a month or so because of slack demand for steel.