EPA recently finalized a Clean Air Act settlement with Cleveland Cliffs Burns Harbor LLC, in Burns Harbor, Indiana. This large steel mill sits on the southernmost shores of Lake Michigan and is just west of the Indiana Dunes National Park.
EPA found that Burns Harbor was emitting excessive amounts of particulate matter and hazardous air pollutants from its Basic Oxygen Furnace shop (BOF Shop). These oxygen furnaces are used to create steel and had been violating pollution emission limits while loading the furnace with molten iron, allowing molten material to overflow the furnaces, and during the movement of metal in large ladles within the shop.
The settlement will require Burns Harbor to implement new process controls to ensure the furnaces are loaded more slowly, ensure the pollution control system is running at an acceptably high rate during furnace operation, take steps to react to problems before overflows occurs, and keep liquid metal ladles under pollution control device hoods. The settlement also requires the facility to increase the monitoring of its BOF shop, report its activities to EPA in more detail, install a video camera to record the emissions from the BOF shop, and follow an Optimization Plan that better specifies the workings of the shop. The company must also pay a penalty of $248,396.
The settlement will reduce the emissions of hazardous air pollutants to the air, improving air quality in the National Park and surrounding communities.