Dusty mounds of petroleum coke are gone from Chicago, but federal and city officials discovered a potentially more dangerous type of pollution while investigating the black piles that once towered above the East Side neighborhood.
Air monitors posted around two storage terminals on the Calumet River during 2014 and 2015 detected alarming levels of manganese, a heavy metal used in steelmaking that can permanently damage the nervous system and trigger learning difficulties, memory loss and anxiety.
Investigators have an educated guess about which company is responsible for the pollution. Yet their efforts to pinpoint the culprit and crack down on its emissions have been thwarted for nearly three years.
The chief suspect, S.H. Bell Co., a Pittsburgh-based firm that stockpiles manganese and other materials near the former petcoke sites, has repeatedly ignored city regulations adopted in 2014 that require bulk storage operators to install air pollution monitors around the perimeter of their properties. The company also spurned a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency request for monitoring equipment, prompting the EPA to sue S.H. Bell in federal court last year.
Now the company, which denies it is responsible for the pollution, is resisting the city’s efforts to get the monitors installed before a March 1 deadline S.H. Bell agreed to as part of a legal settlement with federal authorities.
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The ongoing dispute highlights the difficulties regulators often face when enforcing public health laws. Environmental lawyers say it will be even tougher to fight polluters if President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress follow through on plans to gut the EPA’s enforcement office and dramatically reduce the agency’s workforce.
"Cases like this show why it’s so important to have government agencies looking out for communities when corporations dig in their heels and do everything they can to avoid complying with the law," said Mary Gade, who was forced out of the top EPA job in Chicago during President George W. Bush’s administration after she forced Dow Chemical to speed up the removal of toxic waste near its Michigan headquarters. "Without a well-trained, experienced enforcement staff, it’s easier for companies to cut corners in ways that can harm people."
About 20,000 people, including 1,730 ages 5 and younger, live in low-income, predominantly Latino neighborhoods within a mile of the S.H. Bell facility between 101st and 103rd streets. Parents at Gallistel Language Academy, five blocks away from the storage terminal, said they knew little about the company beyond the dump trucks they see rumbling through its gates.
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Unlike the gritty, lung-damaging dust that blew through the neighborhood from petcoke storage facilities, the flakes of manganese that worry federal scientists generally aren’t visible.
Researchers who once assumed the health hazards were limited to steelworkers are increasingly concerned about concentrations detected in the air surrounding facilities that handle manganese. Regular exposure to high levels of the heavy metal can cause manganism, a condition with symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease, and make it more difficult for children to learn and remember.
"We thought we had won a big victory, getting the petcoke out of here so it is safe for our kids to breathe outside," said Veronica Gutierrez, president of the Gallistel PTA. "This manganese is all really new to us, but we don’t like what we’re hearing."
Inspectors began taking a closer look at S.H. Bell in 2014 after reviewing data from pollution monitors the EPA required around two sites operated by KCBX Terminals, a company owned by the conservative industrialists Charles and David Koch, who are major financial backers of congressional efforts to strip the EPA of its powers.
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KCBX shuttered one of its Chicago sites and stopped storing petcoke at the other after the EPA accused the company of violating the federal Clean Air Act and Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration adopted the city’s stringent regulations for bulk storage facilities.
The federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, an arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, later confirmed the petcoke dust posed a health hazard. Buried in the agency’s report about KCBX was another startling finding: The pollution monitors picked up spikes of manganese on days when winds blew from the vicinity of S.H. Bell across the river.
A company spokeswoman said there is no proof it is responsible for the pollution and noted that other facilities in the area also handle manganese, which is used to make steel stronger and more rust-resistant. An email response to questions from the Tribune described the element as a "naturally occurring substance" and an "essential nutrient for human health."
"S.H. Bell believes it has a duty to comply with environmental regulations, and consistently invests in best available technology in order to do so," the company email said.
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Court records and other documents detail a contentious history with government regulators.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office cited S.H. Bell in 2012 for failing for more than six years to have a valid environmental permit . State regulators in 2006 had requested more information about the effectiveness of the company’s pollution controls but S.H. Bell never responded, according to the complaint.
Under city regulations, the company should have installed pollution monitors in 2014. The Chicago Department of Public Health has denied multiple requests for an exemption.
The EPA, citing its authority under the federal Clean Air Act, filed its own request for monitors in March 2015. After giving the company more than a year to comply, the government filed its lawsuit in federal court.
S.H. Bell’s attorneys have argued in court documents and letters that the company is struggling financially and shouldn’t be required to install the monitors until after it takes steps to tamp down dust. During a September hearing, a company attorney argued the EPA "didn’t have a rational scientific basis" for requesting the equipment.
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U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin questioned why it took federal prosecutors so long to haul S.H. Bell into court. He also was skeptical of the company’s defense.
"I’m very uncomfortable with the fact that a company that claims to be complying with environmental laws won’t allow equipment on their property to prove it," Durkin said.
Regulators already have years of experience fighting S.H. Bell in Ohio, where federal and state officials have pushed the company to curb manganese emissions from its facilities near East Liverpool, a struggling factory town on the Pennsylvania border west of Pittsburgh.
The Ohio EPA has cited S.H. Bell four times since 2008 for allowing manganese dust to blow into surrounding areas. A 2010 federal study found that people living near the Ohio facilities were more likely to suffer body tremors and have problems with motor skills — ailments linked to chronic manganese exposure.
In September, federal scientists reported that average manganese concentrations in East Liverpool were higher during the past two years than they were a decade ago. The findings prompted another crackdown that resulted in a federal legal settlement announced last month.
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S.H. Bell agreed to install pollution monitors around its property, install video cameras to track its equipment and take additional steps to reduce manganese dust. The deal also included a common provision allowing S.H. Bell to avoid taking responsibility for the pollution.
John Walke, an EPA lawyer in the Clinton administration who now works at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, said it is not surprising that companies put up a fight when accused of violating environmental laws. But there are signs the Trump administration may pull back on filing enforcement cases in the first place.
Scott Pruitt, newly sworn in as Trump’s EPA administrator, abolished an environmental enforcement division while serving as Oklahoma attorney general and has led or taken part in 14 lawsuits that challenged the federal agency’s authority
"We’re talking about the bread-and-butter protections that Americans have come to expect," Walke said. "The public assumes somebody is looking out for them, but it takes political will and people enforcing the law to do that."
mhawthorne@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @scribeguy
S.H. Bell storage facility Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune An aerial view Feb. 17, 2017, shows industry along the Calumet River in Chicago, including the S.H. Bell storage facility, in foreground at lower left, along the east side of the river. An aerial view Feb. 17, 2017, shows industry along the Calumet River in Chicago, including the S.H. Bell storage facility, in foreground at lower left, along the east side of the river. (Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune)
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