West End smog remains a mystery

Essar Algoma Steel Inc. has responded to an enquiry from SooToday.com about recent high levels of fine particulate matter (PM10) readings and date and time discrepancies on its air quality reporting website.

Brenda Stenta, the company's corporate communications manager, has sent us the following response.

While she says there were some unusual events in the steel plant, they were not of significant enough to account for the high smog readings from its Wallace Terrace monitoring site yesterday.

Stenta also advises that the first baghouse on No. 7 Blast Furnace is functioning well and the second baghouse will be online in a week.

Two more have been ordered.

The photo shown, taken at 7:45 a.m. today, is from a HazeCam located at Lake Superior State University in Sault Michigan.

As of 8 a.m. this morning, Algoma Steel is reporting a PM10 reading of 32 at its Wallace Terrace monitoring site. ************************* Carol: Thank you for your note.

Unfortunately there are some compatibility issues with the monitoring station software when the data is imported into Excel for posting to the site.

We have successfully addressed nearly all of these however from time to time this issue can corrupt the time-date stamp and is the likely cause on this occasion. With respect to the PM10 readings at 11:30 p.m. on June 4 it should be noted this figure represents a rolling 24 hour average, as is the reporting standard for the Ministry of the Environment.

To better understand possible cause or source, our third=party operator has retrieved the hourly data covering the 24 hours between 7 a.m. June 4 through 6 a.m. June 5.

The data shows that sometime between 8 and 9 a.m. [June 4], the PM10 values went up from less than 20 to just over 50, wind direction shifted from straight east to south-east, and wind speed went from a low of 7-10 kilometres to brisk gusts ranging around 21-23 kilometres.

Based on a review of the wind data, both ironmaking and cokemaking operations are within those wind vectors as potential impact sources, however there was only one abnormal event reported from ironmaking at the furnace on June 4 but that was around 6:43 a.m. and the station PM10 readings were less than 20 in that timeframe.

At 5 p.m. there was a light stack emission reported at cokemaking, lasting a short period of time.

Around that time the winds were out of the SSE approx 17 km/hr, PM10 reading was 71.

The wind vector for that period isn't consistent with any impact from the cokemaking source. No other abnormal events were reported from the operating areas within the corresponding wind vector during the day and through [yesterday] morning which would suggest there must have been some other contributing source in the vicinity of the monitoring station during this period.

That combined with the weather conditions have likely lead to the elevated reading. The portable baghouse on No. 7 blast furnace continues to operate well, and construction of the ducting for the second portable baghouse on No. 7 stub stack is currently underway.

We expect this unit will be online and operational within a week.

The other two portable units have been ordered and will be delivered in due course.

I hope this helps to answer your questions.

Thank you for your continued interest in Algoma.

Best Regards,

Brenda

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