Something wasn’t right with the government-ordered cleanup of the Sparrows Point steel mill. The tip-off for Beth L. McGee, senior water quality scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation was the level of contamination in sediment samples brought to light last year not by state or federal regulators, but by a third party.The new sediment tests indicated that environmental conditions in the waterways near the Point had not improved and, in fact, many hazardous chemicals were in greater concentrations than what was reported back in 1996.AES Energy Corp., which had commissioned the tests as part of its effort to put a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal at Sparrows Point, found sediments in the Patapsco River laced with chromium, copper, lead, mercury, zinc and other toxic metals.“The results were alarming,” McGee said, “because they were higher than samples that had been previously collected in the harbor, including around the steel mill.”McGee is one of the leading experts on aquatic life in this part of the Chesapeake Bay. Her doctoral dissertation involved assessing the effects of chemical contaminants on amphipods (small crustaceans native to the Bay) that burrow into sediment in Baltimore Harbor. She has led studies collecting and analyzing sediments in the Patapsco estuary while at the University of Maryland and, later, as chief of the environmental contaminants branch of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Annapolis.STILL MAKING STEELWhile it has downsized over the years, Sparrows Point is still the largest steel mill in the Northeast and the only mill on the East Coast that makes steel from scratch. A great many hazardous substances are used and released during the steelmaking process. For example, many contaminants are discharged in semi-molten slag that is dumped in landfills close to harbor waterways.A majority of the surface sediment analyses (between zero and two feet deep) conducted by AES detected trace metals well in excess of the “Probable Effects Limit” (PEL), a widely used benchmark of risk to marine life.Lower levels of metal contamination were found in intermediate samples (between two and 10 feet deep). Relatively few of the samples at this depth exceeded the PELs, except for high readings recorded near the old shipbuil ding docks. For deep samples (between 10 and 20 feet deep), none of the metal concentrations exceeded the PELs.
Something's Rotten in the City of Baltimore