By RICK CALLAHAN

Associated Press Writer

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Federal regulators who recently blocked a wastewater permit for U.S. Steel’s Gary Works steel mill complex have told Indiana officials they now have additional concerns about the draft permit.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sent a letter to Indiana officials on Wednesday detailing three new objections to the permit. Four members of Congress from Indiana and Illinois also have urged the agency to hold a public hearing on the proposed permit.

Environmental groups contend the draft permit is too lenient and either eliminates or fails to include limits on discharges of toxic chemical and metal discharges from the sprawling Gary Works complex into the Grand Calumet River, which flows into Lake Michigan.

On Oct. 1, the EPA blocked the proposed permit, saying it would not be approved until the Indiana Department of Environmental Management included more stringent pollution standards for the facility’s discharges into the Grand Calumet.

Among other things, the agency criticized IDEM for giving U.S. Steel five years to limit several pollutants — including mercury, lead, cyanide, ammonia and benzo(a)pyrene, a cancer-causing chemical — from the Gary mill, which is its largest plant and capable of producing 7.5 million tons of raw steel a year.

In its letter sent Wednesday to IDEM, the EPA listed other concerns, including that it was unclear whether the permit’s limits on chromium, cadmium, copper, nickel, silver, cyanide and other chemicals meet Indiana’s water-quality standards.

It also states that the draft permit doesn’t require that the mills use the best technology available to control discharges from the complex’s series of blast furnaces, coke ovens and steel-finishing mills.

Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin and Barack Obama of Illinois, and Democratic Reps. Peter Visclosky, whose northwestern Indiana district includes Gary, and Rahm Emanuel of Chicago asked the EPA’s regional office in Chicago to schedule a public hearing on the EPA’s various objections.

Visclosky called for a “constructive solution” to the permit process, saying a transparent permit process is the best way to protect Lake Michigan’s water quality. He also asked the EPA to explain why it was concerned with the draft permit and how it will work with IDEM to revise it.

The uproar over the U.S. Steel permit comes only months after IDEM was criticized harshly for granting BP PLC a wastewater permit that allows its oil refinery in nearby Whiting to significantly boost the volume of pollutants it could dump into Lake Michigan.

After a strong outcry by the public and elected officials — including in Illinois — BP executive said the refinery would stay within the limits set in its previous discharge permit.

Although in the BP case the EPA had endorsed that final permit, the federal agency took the unusual step of formally objecting to the U.S. Steel permit in its draft form.

IDEM spokesman Amy Hartsock said IDEM maintains that the proposed permit, which runs nearly 120 pages, is “more protective” than the Gary Works’ current permit, which was issued in 1994.

“This is the most complex permit in Indiana,” she said, adding that it would bring the regulation of the plant’s discharges up to date with current rules.

Under federal regulations, EPA spokeswoman Anne Rowan said regional EPA administrators can order a hearing on the agency’s objections about a permit if there’s “significant public interest based on requests received.”

She said the agency would decide soon whether it will hold a hearing.

Posted 10/19/2007