A German contractor for the proposed Big River Steel LLC mill to be built near Osceola did not guarantee its work will meet air-quality standards, based on written comments and email messages from the firm presented at a hearing Friday.
SMS Siemag of Dusseldorf, Germany, will manufacture equipment for the $1.1 billion Big River Steel project. Siemag has developed, designed and built steel mills in the United States since 1921.
“We cannot guarantee that the required [emission limits] can be achieved for [three different furnaces],” Axel Sprenger, a Siemag executive, wrote to David Stickler of Big River Steel in an email July 25. That was after the preliminary permit had been issued for the Osceola plant by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality but before the final permit was issued Sept. 18.
In another document dated July 12, 2013, Siemag said, “Presently it is unknown if such low values [of emissions] can be achieved at all by the affected units.”
The documents were discussed in a hearing be-fore Charles Moulton, an administrative law judge for the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission. Nucor Corp. filed the complaint against Big River over the issuance of the air-quality permit.
The significance of the documents, said David Taggart, an attorney for Nucor Corp., is that Siemag misrepresented to the Environmental Quality Department that it could meet the standards.
“What we’ve heard [throughout the four-day hearing] is that this equipment could achieve those results,” Taggart said in an interview. The Environmental Quality Department thought Siemag could meet the emission standards because of discussions with Siemag, Taggart said.
Taggart introduced the email and document into the record and asked Gale Huffnagle, an expert witness for Big River, if it would be important to tell the department that Siemag was not able to guarantee the limitations.
“What this says is that it may take time and money to meet [the limits],” Huffnagle said. “[Siemag is saying] we cannot meet them right off the bat, but we’ll work with [Big River] to make sure they can comply. That is not the same as the lack of a vendor guarantee.”
Even if Siemag didn’t provide a guarantee in writing about meeting the standards, the company spoke to the department and told officials that its equipment could meet the limitations, Thomas Rheaume, an air permit branch manager at the Environmental Quality Department, said in an interview after the hearing.
“Our job is to drive the numbers as low as possible,” Rheaume said. “We’re looking to get the cleanest plant we can get.”
Alan Perkins, an attorney for Big River, said the Siemag email and document were written before the final permit for Big River was issued.
“Those issues were ultimately worked out,” Perkins said in an interview. “The equipment providers agreed in the end that they could and would meet those emission limits. That’s what happens when you take something out of context.”
It was Nucor’s strategy to put a cloud over the hearing, said Martin Booher, a Cleveland attorney who represents Big River.
The plant that Big River is permitted to build will meet the air-permit standards and site work on the plant site soon, Booher said.
The crux of the issue is whether SMS Siemag will meet the limitations included in the final air permit, said Teresa Marks, director of the Environmental Quality Department.
“And that’s one reason we require stack testing immediately after they start,” Marks said. “So if they can’t reach those limitations with the way they are operating, then they’ll either have to change their operating procedures or they’ll have to put on additional controls.”
If Big River can’t adjustment to meet the limits, it can’t operate the plant, Marks said.
The hearing ended Friday. A decision in the case should be released late next month or in April.
Business, Pages 27 on 02/22/2014