ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY HEADLINESEnvironment and Sustainability
Ohio EPA, Tube City Settle Air Violations
Dec. 31, 2008 The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency reports that Tube City IMS has agreed to pay $71,500 to settle violations of Ohio's air pollution laws related to its slag handling and processing operations supporting AK Steel Corp.'s Middletown Works.
AK Steel owns the property where Tube City dumps, cools, handles and processes AK Steel’s slag before it is recycled into aggregate.
Hamilton County Department of Environmental Services, which contracts to administer air pollution laws for Ohio EPA, found Tube City failed to comply with a number of specific requirements of its air pollution control permits, including the requirement to keep visible emissions from the basic oxygen furnace slag pit to acceptable levels. The Hamilton County DEP also said that Tube City had caused nuisance dust emissions that resulted in complaints from the facility's neighbors, and had failed to install water sprays to continuously apply water to the slag during dumping, excavation and loadout for the blast furnace slag pit. The DEP also found that the company had failed to monitor dust conditions daily, by not conducting inspections of roadways or slag piles on the weekends.
A portion of the penalty, $14,300, is to be paid to Ohio EPA's Clean Diesel School Bus Program Fund, which provides grants to school districts to retrofit school buses with pollution control equipment to reduce particulate emissions from their diesel engines. Half of the remaining $57,200 will be paid to Ohio EPA to administer the agency's air pollution control programs, with the remaining half going to the Ohio Environmental Education Fund.