From Delaware Online - http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20100718/NEWS02/7180321

Delaware health: Claymont residents awaiting soot fix

DNREC readies new order for steel recycling operation at old mill

By JEFF MONTGOMERY • The News Journal • July 18, 2010

Soot fallout from a steel recycling plant in Claymont has continued to trouble some neighbors despite extra monitoring programs and multi-year enforcement efforts, local residents said last week.

Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control officials are scheduled to update a community Dust Study Group on the latest round of efforts to end the problem on Tuesday.

Samples collected by an environmental group last year included several with levels of manganese and lead that exceeded Environmental Protection Agency health standards, as well as fine, jagged particles of metal. Manganese and lead both can cause nervous system disorders after high and prolonged exposure, among other problems.

"We're hopeful, and we've seen a reduction in some of the dust, but we're still seeing it," said Delores Whilden, who has worked for years to get the state to act on the metallic soot problems. The fine, abrasive, metallic deposits -- swept up with magnets by some residents -- have damaged automobile paint in the past.

"We are getting a little bit impatient," Whilden said. "Right now, I'm hoping that we're going to see something soon that's a little more concrete."

DNREC officials said Friday that the agency is preparing a new pollution order and agreement for the plant, which recently had a change in management. The agency has said previously that it has not detected unsafe levels of toxic materials in the air from soot.

Company spokeswoman Kelly Brossart said the plant has made significant progress, and also has been sending updates directly to community members.

"We have undertaken extensive measures to minimize dust from our facility and maintain compliance with environmental standards," Brossart said, "including paving the majority of melt shop area roadways, sealing of the melt shop building, and installing water sprays to suppress dust from the slag processing operations."

Evraz-Claymont makes specialty custom-steel plates from scrap, and can produce as much as 500,000 tons of steel yearly. The operation has had a rocky history.

The plant opened in 1918 along Philadelphia Pike as Worth Steel and operated later as PhoenixSteel, but went into bankruptcy in 1983.

It was later acquired by an investment unit of the Chinese government and renamed CitiSteel, then sold and reformed as Claymont Steel in 2005. A Russian global investment company with coal and steel-making interests in the United States and Canada bought the site in 2007 for $564.8 million.

DNREC imposed pollution penalties on the company twice in recent years, and threatened owners with a shutdown order in 2006 after finding that the plant's actual mercury emissions were far higher than estimates reported to regulators. State officials also demanded cuts in soot releases and other improvements.

Resident complaints attracted attention and help from a California nonprofit that specializes in citizen-led air-quality sampling. Tests of soot found outside the plant's boundaries showed higher-than-normal levels of lead and manganese.