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Iron and Steel Mill Sites

Mills tell the story of America. Flourishing mills invoke images of America's industrial strength and success. As mills thrived, so did their surrounding communities, developing into towns and cities. When the mills closed, these towns and cities were left to search for stability and new opportunities outside of their mill town identity. The mill industry's overall decline left an extensive legacy of vacant, often abandoned, and sometimes contaminated former mill sites. While today the industry is increasing its competitive stance through restructuring and operational efficiencies, it left behind a legacy of older, obsolete mills – including buildings and land – with which surrounding communities must contend (EPA, 2006).
Not all iron and steel mills are appropriate candidates for brownfields redevelopment because of high levels of contamination and their large size; however, a number of iron and steel mills have been redeveloped in their entirety. Often, part of these sites have been assessed, cleaned up, and redeveloped. Common types of iron and steel mills are:
  1. Integrated Mills – These mills use iron ore as a basic raw material and platform all operations from coke making to finishing.
  2. Specialty or Mini-Mills – These mills use scrap metal as a basic raw material and perform only certain operations (e.g., rolling, but not finishing).
  3. Stand Alone Coke Mills – These mills produce coke for use at other facilities.
  4. Stand Alone Finishing Mills – These mills take steel products such as sheets, billets, or rods and conduct forming and finishing operations.
Some iron and steel mills such as integrated mills, tend to be very large, consisting of several buildings on tens or even hundreds of acres. These buildings house coke ovens, sinter plants, furnaces, rolling mills, finishing operations, wastewater treatment plants, chemical storage units, and maintenance operations. Some buildings may have been used for different operations over the life of the facility; however, the furnaces will most likely have stayed in the same location.
The land surrounding the buildings at an iron and steel mill is generally used for:
  1. Bulk product storage
  2. Scrap metal storage
  3. Slag pits
  4. Iron ore storage
  5. Under- and above-ground storage tanks
  6. Rail lines and parking lots
  7. Cooling towers
The byproducts of iron and steel mill operations include a number of potentially hazardous wastes, some of which are regulated under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), such as coal tars that contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and light oils, semivolatile compounds such as benzo(a) pyrene, benzo(a)anthracene, chrysene, creosote, napthalene, pyrene, and phenol, that are commonly found near coke battery areas. Volatile organic compounds such as benzene, toluene, and xylenes, are commonly found in the coke making areas. Ammonia and cyanide are also associated with these operations.
Steel mill redevelopment offers unique opportunities for communities. Many former steel mills feature the following benefits:
  1. Central location – Because many towns and cities were built around steel mills, these properties are often still located in the heart of their communities, providing opportunities for revitalizing downtown areas.
  2. Transportation access – Many steel mill properties have established rail, highway, and river access, which can support new industrial development and/or facilitate transportation-oriented development.
  3. Easily parceled land – Large tracts of land, often in single ownership, lend themselves to parceling. Because parceling can lead to multiple reuses, redevelopment need not rely on attracting a single economic engine. Parceling can also make it possible to address the full site is smaller pieces, allowing for redevelopment of one parcel while other parcels continue to be addressed.
  4. Potential economic diversification – Redevelopment of steel mill properties offers communities the chance to diversify their economies, ending the dependencies on one industry.
  5. Greenspace and recreation- Because many steel mills were located along waterways and/or used rail transportation and are large in size, they lend themselves to greenway planning and recreational opportunities including rails to trails.
Like other brownfields projects, steel mill cleanup and redevelopment can be challenging due to real or perceived contamination, liability and regulatory issues, permitting processes, cost overruns, and limitations on financing. Compared to typical brownfields projects, there are some challenges more commonly associated with steel mill redevelopment, including:
  1. Gaining control of property – Many steel mill properties are controlled by a bankruptcy court/trustees or the steel companies themselves. Negotiating terms of sale of property transfer with these entities can be a challenge.
  2. Subdividing large tracts of land – As many of these properties are large in scale (encompassing 100 acres or more), they must be subdivided to best fit the needs of multiple end-users.
  3. Contamination – Contamination typical of steel-related industries include petroleum based products (used to cut and coat steel) in spill areas, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), asbestos in structures, underground storage tanks (USTs), and slag.
Contamination from iron and steel mills can pose a very real danger to human and environmental health. Remediation of sites contaminated by chemicals associated with iron and steel mills can be costly and time consuming, but it can be done. An example case study of a mill redevelopment is included in SMARTe. Technical Approaches to Characterizing and Clean Up of Iron and Steel Mill Sites under the Brownfields Initiative provides an overview of the contaminants and remediation technologies typically used at iron and steel mill brownfields, yet every site is unique, and developers will need to develop a remediation plan based upon the contamination actually present on-site.
Resources for Iron and Steel Mills is available in the Links to Resources for Iron and Steel Mills Exhibit.
Exhibit: Links to Resources for Iron and Steel Mills
Organization
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U.S. EPA
Brownfield Mill Projects
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