U.S. Steel Didn't Test For Toxic Metal After Spill Into L Michigan Trib

"U.S. Steel failed to test a Lake Michigan tributary for highly toxic hexavalent chromium after blue liquid "with visible solids" poured out of one of the company's northwest Indiana plants in late October, according to documents posted online Tuesday by state regulators.

The incident marked the second time this year that the company's Midwest Plant spilled chromium into Burns Waterway, a man-made slip that flows into the lake near a sprawling complex of steel mills dividing the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

An inspector from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management visited the plant Nov. 16, a day after the Tribune first reported on the latest spill. Plant managers told the inspector they had opted not to test for the most dangerous form of the metal, even though the earlier spill in April had released up to 920 pounds of hexavalent chromium into the water."

Michael Hawthorne reports for the Chicago Tribune December 12, 2017.