Environment ministry to discuss air emission with ArcelorMittal Dofasco
The provincial environment ministry will meet with ArcelorMittal Dofasco officials to try to find ways to prevent future air pollution incidents like one that took place on the weekend.
A giant black particulate emission was released Sunday morning during a process called “coffining” in which a load of molten iron is cooled in slag pits.
The dark cloud was seen by Environment Hamilton executive director Lynda Lukasik, who took photographs and complained to the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.
Ministry spokesperson Gary Wheeler said, “The ministry takes these public concerns very seriously. In response to this event, ministry staff will meet with the company this week to review its existing action plan to reduce the frequency of coffining events and the amount of iron involved, and to determine what further steps may be required.” ArcelorMittal Dofasco says the incident began with the breakdown of a crane that forced the company to have to cool down a load of molten iron instead of processing it into steel.
“We do not want to see these kinds of emissions from our operations. We do everything in our power to avoid them and we are committed to improving,” company spokesperson Marie Verdun said.
She said the company “will have a plan shortly for additional technology to address this issue.”
The coffining emission on Sunday was the latest of several pollution incidents that have raised the ire of nearby residents over the past several years. Normally molten iron is transferred to the company’s electric arc or basic oxygen steelmaking furnaces, but sometimes — especially during an equipment malfunction — there is more than can be handled, said Verdun.
The company has been trying to cut back on the number of coffining incidents it needs to do by process modifications as well as trying to mitigate the particulate discharge when coffining is done, she said.
But Lukasik said that’s not good enough. “We’ve been talking about coffining emissions for years and years now.
“This is not OK. And they need to do something so that, if they choose to continue to produce more iron than they need, and if they choose to continue to rely on coffining as their method for handling excess iron during regular and shutdown situations, then they need to figure out how to stop these extreme events (and ideally, the ongoing emissions) or face regulatory consequences,” she said.
Lukasik believes the ministry should not allow the company to handle excess iron “in this uncontrolled fashion ... It’s a very primitive practice — digging a coffin-shaped pit into the ground and dumping molten iron into it — not to mention a total waste of energy.”