To our community,
ArcelorMittal Dofasco has put forth a comprehensive application to the Ministry of Environment to determine appropriate and achievable emissions targets between now and 2015. Our steelmaking complex is state of the art and is among the most efficient, feasible and technically advanced in North America. However, we are always striving for improvement. The application comes after years of consultation, analysis and feasibility study and in addition to a multitude of stakeholders is supported by nearly 500 pages of documentation including research and analysis.
ArcelorMittal Dofasco takes its environmental responsibilities very seriously. We continue to implement improvements in our steelmaking process to improve the health and safety and air quality of our employees, the community and the region while ensuring a sustainable steel sector. In fact, over the past 25 years, we’ve invested more than $210 million in long-term environmental projects.
We are grateful to the many collaborators of the air quality standards in Ontario – The Ministry of Environment, Public Health and environmental organizations, and business and industry stakeholders. Improving air quality is in everyone’s best interest and a multitude of stakeholders have been working for a number of years to determine appropriate and achievable air quality goals.
Our five year improvement targets are levels that we know we can meet with current available technology. Through our $16 million Blue Skies Air Action plan we are already working to improve air quality, concentrating on the reduction of Suspended Particulate Matter, Total Reduced Sulphur, Benzene and Benzo(a)pyrene. Over the past five years, ArcelorMittal Dofasco has invested more than $19 million in environment projects. Nearly $6 million of that was directed towards air quality.
We will also continue to track the development of and evaluate several technology options towards further reducing these emissions. In fact, a third party engineering and environmental health strategies consulting team was retained by the Ministry of Environment and this team supports ArcelorMittal’s action plan.
We held two community information sessions last fall and representatives of our company were there to present, in detail, our application and our plans. In addition, representatives from ArcelorMittal Dofasco, including our President and CEO, Juergen Schachler, have met with many environmental groups, including Environment Hamilton to discuss environmental issues.
We are very proud of our nearly 100 years in Hamilton and our continued commitment to the community’s wellbeing. We continue to foster an open dialogue; the community’s feedback is important to us. We also have an email address that anyone may use to send us their questions or comments: communitystrength@arcelormittal.com.