Once again, the citizens of Indiana are forced to cope with another major industrial discharge emergency that pollutes our waters and adversely impacts our natural resources, including our drinking water and only national park. The latest pollution incident from U.S. Steel comes just days after the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) renewed for another five years the facility’s wastewater discharge (NPDES) permit and only weeks after the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana approved a consent decree intended to prevent future illegal discharges from this plant.

In both cases, concerned citizens and organizations have labored to provide sound, technically feasible recommendations to improve the permit and consent decree through public hearings and written comments. Unfortunately, the result was the same: our comments were largely rejected, and Indiana faces yet another environmental emergency from a billion-dollar company operating on the shores of one of the most precious freshwater lakes in the world. We’ve been down this road before. Enough is enough.