As three of northwest Ohio’s most prominent elected officials and two of its highest-profile business leaders concluded their rosy, welcoming remarks Thursday at the groundbreaking for the Cleveland-Cliffs Inc.’s upcoming $700-million iron-briquette manufacturing facility, there was still an elephant in the room nobody was talking about: the environment.
Then Lourenco Goncalves, president and chief executive officer, hit that issue head-on with a series of bold predictions.
He promised to make that industrial facility in East Toledo “the most environmentally compliant plant in the world.”
Unlike many executives in the steel industry, he never talked about ever trying to roll back environmental regulations.
Instead, he chastised China for weak environmental laws and said his company aims to serve as a model across the world by showing how an important feedstock for steel mills can be made in a self-contained facility with little or no fugitive dust emitted.
“We are part of the solution. We are not part of the problem,” Mr. Goncalves told several dozen people during his remarks. “We’re going to be here for a long, long time. We’re going to be great neighbors forever.”
During a half-hour discussion with reporters after the event, Mr. Goncalves said the East Toledo plant, to be called IronUnits, will use taconite pellets manufactured at the company’s Northshore Mining facility in Silver Bay, Minn.
He promised no parallels to a Texas facility that Ohio Environmental Protection Agency officials studied before issuing Cleveland-Cliffs its permit. That iron-briquette facility, in Portland, Texas, is owned by an Austrian steel company called Voestalpine, and has angered residents there for a number of pollution issues, including airborne particles that have settled on area waterways. Loose soot is blamed for turning a stream red.
Mr. Goncalves said the East Toledo plant will be “fully enclosed” and emit no air pollution while all water drawn into it from the Maumee River will be treated on-site and recirculated, not discharged.
“I want to be part of something that is environmentally sustainable,” Mr. Goncalves told reporters.
The Ohio EPA said last month when issuing the permit that carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, and greenhouse-gas pollutants are expected to be emitted along with other pollutants.
But the agency said none of the emissions will be at levels harmful to public health or the environment.
The plant will produce 2.48 million tons of hot-briquetted iron a year once it begins operation in 2020.
Others speaking at the event included U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo); Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz; Dean Monske, Regional Growth Partnership president and chief executive officer; Paul Toth, Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority president and chief executive officer, and Toledo City Councilman Peter Ujvagi.
Miss Kaptur said the plant infuses more excitement into the “natural gift of a waterfront” along the East Toledo shoreline — building on the momentum that began a few years ago with construction of the National Museum of the Great Lakes and is carried on by Metroparks Toledo with plans to build a metropark along the Maumee River in an area known as the Marina District.
“We see the entire region transforming,” she said.
Mr. Kapszukiewicz said the project is indicative of East Toledo’s industrial legacy from its heyday.
“Here we are again, with history repeating itself,” he said.
East Toledo’s Birmingham area once had so much industry that many workers walked to their jobs, Mr. Ujvagi said.
Mr. Toth said the Toledo port just had a visit from its first oceanic freighter of the 2018 shipping season on Tuesday, a vessel from the Ukraine that unloaded pig iron.
“By 2020, we likely will not be welcoming a ship [from the Ukraine] carrying pig iron, because we will be making it right here in Toledo,” he said.
The plant will be built on part of the former Gulf Oil refinery site on Front Street and Millard Avenue in East Toledo.
Mr. Goncalves said construction is already two months ahead of schedule. He thanked those and others in attendance and said the project “would not be possible without the leadership of [Ohio Gov.] John Kasich.”
The end product, the iron briquettes, will be used by area steel mills, including North Star BlueScope Steel LLC in Delta, Ohio, to make automotive body parts and other products. The Toledo plant is to employ 130 people. Mr. Goncalves said the average salary will be $90,000.
Contact Tom Henry at thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.
First Published April 5, 2018, 9:28 p.m.
