Councillors questions steel plant's own ability to respond to spills into the St. Marys River
Algoma Steel's CEO came to city council on Monday to offer an update on the company's electric arc furnace project, but Michael Garcia ended up fielding questions from the mayor and members of councillors about a series of chemical spills that have occurred in the past five years.
"As soon as that cloudy discharge was noticed we stopped immediately discharging from the basin, notified the Minister of Environment and began testing. The pH never exceeded the range of what it needed to be," said Garcia. Corey Gardi, councillor for Ward 5, asked Garcia if Algoma Steel has any form of marine response on site that could be deployed immediately in the case of a spill.
Caputo told Garcia she agrees with her colleague that having equipment on site to mitigate the effects of future spills is a good idea. He added: "Hopefully going forward we're only going to have good news, but we have to be open and honest about how are we doing, but we have to be passionate about being perfect because that's what we want of ourselves and that's what everybody that we live with in this community expects of us."
Last October, Algoma Steel pleaded guilty to charges related to a Oct. 18, 2019 chemical spill when unknown amount of flushing liquor to ground, flowed to site drains then to the main water filter plant that discharges to the St Marys River. The company was fined $150,000 plus a 25 per cent victim surcharge.
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