Gary residents urged the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) to hold off on renewing Carmeuse Lime’s 5-year operating permit until it could provide the public with more information about numerous violations at the plant and take additional public comment. Carmeuse Lime, located on Lake Michigan near Buffington Harbor, produces lime used in the steelmaking process.
“Carmeuse Lime’s emissions are significant, and the company compliance record is poor,” Dorreen Carey, president of Gary Advocates for Responsible Development (GARD), said in a formal letter to IDEM requesting a public meeting and additional time for public comment on the permit renewal request.
A review of public records on IDEM’s website shows that during its current five-year permit, IDEM has issued Carmeuse 7 Violations Letters and 6 Formal Enforcement Actions, with the most recent filed in 2022.
“A company’s monitoring and record-keeping responsibilities are not voluntary. They are required by IDEM, and they are critical to protecting community health and the environment because they are the only way IDEM and the public can be sure a company is meeting its operating and emissions requirements on a day-to-day basis,” Carey added.
In her letter to IDEM, Carey also raised questions about the relationship of Carmeuse Lime and the permit renewal to the former Vexor engineered fuel (EF) company, located at 8480 Industrial Highway in Gary. This plant, closed due to fire and now re-named Innofuel Energy Solutions, is discussed in the Carmeuse Lime permit renewal correspondence as being a fuel source for Carmeuse. According to Innofuels website, it blends garbage, including plastics, paper, cardboard, and synthetic fiber material with high BTU industrial wastes to produce an engineered fuel that can be used as an alternative to coal.
According to the Environmental Law & Policy Center, which commented on Carmeuse’s permit renewal request in a separate letter: “North Lake County has more permitted major sources of air pollution than any other place in Indiana – either measured per capita or per square mile. The neighborhoods around the Carmeuse facility have some of the highest levels in Indiana for many environmental justice indexes as reported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (“EPA’s”) EJScreen mapping and screening tool,” ELPC said.
Carey urged IDEM to tighten emission limits, increase monitoring and reporting, and step-up inspections and enforcement before issuing permit renewals.
