Claymont Steel continues to pollute the air at an alarming rate, according to a piece by Jeff Montgomery in today’s News-Journal.
University of Southern California professor Constantinos Sioutas made the observations in a newly released report based on data collected by a Claymont Coalition monitoring team working with the international group Global Community Monitor.
Levels of five metals found in Claymont dust “appear to be much higher than those even in the polluted urban environments of Los Angeles,” Sioutas wrote.
“Based on these concentration levels, long-term exposures to fine particulate matter in the residential locations near the Claymont Steel industrial [site] would be considered unsafe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization,” Sioutas said.
It is not as if this should come as any surprise to Claymont Steel since:
Delaware’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control already has the plant under a “clean up or shut down” order issued in 2006, targeting soot emissions and smokestack releases of mercury. Regulators warned the company late last year that it was failing to meet its obligations.
Claymont Steel has not been a good neighbor in other ways, as their unwillingness to work with local and federal officials to make available an undevelopable portion of their land has thrown a monkey wrench into plans to use Federal stimulus funds to improve the passenger rail corridor in the area.
Nobody wants to see 400 jobs ‘go away’ in the area. But Claymont Steel appears to hold the position that the only choices available are to allow the company to continue poisoning its neighbors, or face the loss of the jobs. This willful flouting of laws designed to protect residents from serious health hazards cannot be allowed to continue.
Claymont Steel has thrown down the gauntlet. Time for DNREC to act.