Indiana state regulators said ArcelorMittal’s steel plant in Burns Harbor has been manipulating test results after a toxic chemical spill last summer that killed 3,000 fish in the Little Calumet River, according to local news reports.
In a letter to the company, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) said ArcelorMittal has “made a practice of redoing tests that showed violations, and using the new tests to replace those results, sometimes after they already had been reported to the state.”
State authorities said this “undermines the integrity” of the test results ArcelorMittal submits.
“If ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor maintains that it cannot credibly report noncompliant results based upon one analysis of a given sample (that passes all quality assurance/quality control checks), then IDEM cannot feel confident in compliant results reported by ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor that are based on one analysis of a given sample (that passes all quality assurance/quality control checks),” the letter said. “ArcelorMittal’s self-monitoring program is either capable of generating valid results based upon one analysis of a given sample or it is not.”
IDEM said other tests at the plant found unacceptable amounts of ammonia and cyanide in water discharged from one of the plant’s outfalls, and the company has been unable to determine the source of the chemicals. This has led to concerns that an “unpermitted wastewater stream” is contaminating Lake Michigan.
In October, a report from IDEM accused ArcelorMittal of committing seven violations of its permit – including for the spill itself, failing to promptly notify the state, failure to properly maintain the plant, and failing to minimize the effect of the spill.