Arcelor Mittal is appealing a decision by the Burns Harbor Board of Zoning Appeals that blocked the steel plant from landfilling additional wastes on site.

Mittal filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in Porter County Superior Court seeking to overturn the BZA’s June 23 decision, when members voted 3-1 against a zoning amendment that would have expanded use of the steel plant’s landfill.

On Tuesday, the BZA held an executive session to discuss the litigation before convening a public meeting. The BZA was expected to approve findings of fact articulating its June 23 decision, but members unanimously agreed to table those findings.

BZA members also directed their attorney, Charles Parkinson, to ask a representative from both Mittal and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to attend their next meeting to address some of the landfill issues.

Parkinson said after the BZA meeting that the lack of approved findings of fact doesn’t alter the June 23 rejection, but only means that the BZA wants more time to approve the language. The lack of findings was one reason cited in Mittal’s appeal seeking to reverse the BZA’s decision.

Mittal first received a special exception from the BZA in 2007 for a solid waste landfill. The BZA’s approval at that time was for a landfill to accept the sludge byproduct of the steel mill’s wastewater treatment plant.

Mittal filed a zoning amendment with the town, as well as a separate permit with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, seeking approval to landfill additional materials not included in the 2007 approval, including about 700,000 tons of blast furnace “filter cake” currently stockpiled at the plant.

Other materials Mittal wants to landfill onsite include about 60,000 tons per year of basic oxygen filter cake sludge, about 5,000 tons per year of coke oven dust, about 20,000 tons of final filter cake that’s currently landfilled off site, and assorted other wastes including coal, coke, sand, grinding sludge, burnt lime and rubble debris.

All of those materials are identified as solid waste and not hazardous or toxic substances.

Mittal representatives told the BZA at the June 23 meeting that the onsite landfilling operations would be far better for the environment than the current practice of stockpiling the wastes and trucking out other materials to Michigan. Mittal now spends about $3 million to $4 million annually for hauling the wastes out of state.

After raising a variety of questions about the stockpiled materials and the operations of the landfill, the BZA shot down the amendment requested, with members Tom Marconi, Amy Zehner, and Jim Meeks voting against Mittal and Terry Swanson voting in support. Member Gordon McCormick was absent at that June meeting.

At Tuesday night’s meeting, Parkinson presented the five BZA members with proposed findings of facts for their June decision, but the BZA agreed unanimously, without discussion, to table the approval until next month’s meeting, set for August 25.

BZA members also said they’d like Mittal and the IDEM to attend the August meeting to clarify some of the landfill issues.

Meeks raised a concern that the town is being asked to allow Mittal to landfill an assortment of wastes, when the town can’t even allow a truck wash due to the contaminants that could end up in the waste water treatment plant.

“Now does that make any sense to anyone?” he said.

Posted 7/29/2009