NEWS

Unknown spill at U.S. Steel plant leads to closed waters at Indiana Dunes

Joseph Dits
South Bend Tribune
In August 2019, a National Park Service sign closes the walkway to Lakefront Park in Portage, Ind., after a chemical spill at U.S. Steel. The park's waters are again closed after an unknown substance spilled from U.S. Steel on Sunday.  Times of Northwest Indiana Photo, John J. Watkins

The Indiana Dunes National Park has closed the waters of all of its beaches after a rusty-colored discharge from the U.S. Steel plant flowed Sunday into the Burns Waterway in Portage, Ind.  

The discharge was reported Sunday evening, according to park officials, leading to an investigation. So far, officials don’t know what the substance is.  

According to the Times of Northwest Indiana, Portage Mayor Sue Lynch said at 6 p.m. CDT Sunday that the substance was traveling down the waterway toward Lake Michigan, adding, "Now it's all the way across the width of the channel into the open area, the mouth of the ditch." 

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management is leading the investigation.  

Indiana American Water shut down its Ogden Dunes treatment facility as a precaution. The facility conducts real-time water testing but had not seen any impact on its "raw water parameters," the Times reported from a news release. 

U.S. Steel has agreed to pay about $3 million in recent years for wastewater permit violations dating back to 2013, the Times reported from IDEM and court records. That includes the 2017 spill of 300 pounds of hexavalent chromium into Burns Waterway, or 584 times the state’s daily maximum limit.