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AK wants to use device to remove pollution from Dick’s Creek, Monroe Ditch

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By Jessica Heffner, Staff Writer Updated 8:34 AM Tuesday, March 23, 2010

MIDDLETOWN — AK Steel is seeking a permit to use an air stripper to assist with the cleanup of Dick’s Creek and Monroe Ditch.

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency will hold an information session and public meeting later this month to discuss the air stripper, which would be used to remove airborne pollution transferred when contaminated water is extracted from landfills at AK Steel’s Middletown Works.

The hearing will take place at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 23, the Middletown Council Chambers, 1 Donham Plaza.

The equipment will be used as part of the larger cleanup efforts that the company agreed to as the result of a suit brought by Ohio EPA, U.S. EPA and joined by the Sierra Club.

AK Steel had announced last year that cleanup would begin in the summer of 2009. However, the company’s contractor on the project “had to redesign the interim waste water treatment plant in order to meet the very stringent limits within the permit issued by OEPA,” delaying the project, said spokesman Alan McCoy.

The company is waiting for the Ohio EPA to act on its resubmitted permit before beginning work, McCoy said.

When the cleanup is complete, volatile organic compounds should have been captured and contaminants that leak from the on-site landfills into Dicks Creek and Monroe Ditch should have been removed or contained so that they no longer contaminate ground or surface water, according to the Ohio EPA.

Air stripping is the process of forcing air through polluted ground water or surface water to remove harmful chemicals.

The air causes the chemicals to change from a liquid to a gas as they evaporate. The gas is then collected and cleaned.

Written comments will be accepted until Friday, March 26. Submit comments to Mike Ploetz, Hamilton County Department of Environmental Services, 250 William Howard Taft Road, Cincinnati, OH 45219-2660.

Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2843 or jheffner@coxohio.com.

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