Sparrows Point Severstal Plant Leaks Benzene into Baltimore Harbor

An abandoned Severstal coal-chemical plant at Sparrows Point is leaking benzene.  The EPA and Maryland Department of the Environment sought to require Severstal to install skimmer pumps to prevent groundwater already contaminated with benzene from leaking into Baltimore Harbor.  Over 13 years have gone by without a satisfactory solution to the benzene contamination problem in what the media call “one of the most polluted industrial sites in the Chesapeake Bay region.”

Severstal resisted efforts to install the pumps, arguing it could contain the contamination through other presumably cheaper means.  The company installed a small pump that collected all of three gallons of oil per month.  This is simply a laughable, minimal effort to recoup the thousands of gallons of benzene-tainted oil put out by the former benzol plant (estimated at 11,000 gallons by MDE).   Sadly, most of the equipment to do the work isn’t scheduled to be installed until July 2011.

The EPA continues to criticize the company’s limited efforts to install appropriate equipment.  Cancer-causing benzene has been found on site in levels that exceeded 100,000 times the limit considered safe.  However, this former toxic chemical mill. houses four more sites where high concentrations of benzene and naphthalene have been found dissolved in groundwater, with an undetermined amount of the chemicals leaking into Baltimore Harbor.

Because regulators have not required Severstal to install barriers between the contaminated zone and harbor waters, benzene has leaked into groundwater and its discharges continue to run into the harbor.  The outflow of benzene was documented in a study last year for the Maryland Port Administration.