Steelmaker takes environmental stance. (Special Report: Energy/Environment).

Located in Sault Ste. Marie, Algoma Steel Inc. was originally founded to manufacture steel rails, but the company has grown to become Canada's third-largest integrated steelmaker and it is now trying to become a leader in environmental friendliness.

"The message we have learned is proactivity in dealing with environmental issues ends up being a much more efficient way of solving your environmental problems versus waiting for legislative activities to impose a corrective action upon you." says Jerry Suurna, manager of safety, environment and emergency services for the company. "The demand on environmental excellence has been growing every day. We have families that live in our communities, we live here and it is in all our best interests to make sure that our operation has a minimum to negligible impact on our community."

As part of a five-year agreement, Algoma Steel Inc. has voluntarily committed to reducing its emissions for certain toxins, such as benzene, as well as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a byproduct of combustion. The company has also agreed to eliminate its mercury and stored PCBs, a type of fluid used in transformers, by 2005.

Just over two years into the voluntary program, Suurna says the company is already making good progress, especially with the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and benzene reductions.

"We have made some huge gains in particular with the polyairomatic hydrocarbons," he says. "We have reduced those emissions from our base year (1993) by about 80 per cent."

Much of the reduction is a direct result of various processed controls and equipment upgrades, which Suurna points out are ongoing activities that add up to "a couple million dollars every year."

The company has also done a lot of work to eliminate its PCBs. The company still has some PCBs in storage, but Suurna points out that the company has already disposed of approximately one-third of them. He also says that the company hopes to get rid of the rest of the PCBs by 2005 at a significant cost to the company.

In order to eliminate the PCBs, Suurna explains that the company has to send them to a facility in Alberta for high-temperature incineration and destruction.

Meanwhile, the company has already eliminated all of its mercury at an undisclosed cost to the company.

"With mercury, being a persistent toxic substance of concern, our obligation was to get rid of all of our in-storage mercury and we have succeeded in doing that," Suurna says. "We do not have any more mercury m storage at all and all of the mercury went 100 per cent towards recycling."

In addition, Suurna points out that the company has had success in reducing its particulate, or collection of dust particles.

"We have had tremendous gains in our particulate air release as well," he says. "Since 1995 we have reduced our particulate air emissions by about 70 per cent, which has a significant impact on our residential areas around here."

"We are very pleased with that and we are also going to continue to reduce our particulate through aggressive programs on road paving and dust suppression, emission control systems, and those kinds of things."

Suurna also indicates that the company has reduced its emissions of benzene by approximately 77 per cent since 1993, at a cost of approximately $5 million.

"I guess we look at it from an environmental stewardship position," he adds. "Certainly wherever possible, we try to tie environmental gains to other gains, such as productivity and those kinds of issues. However, many of our environmental gains are strictly out-of-pocket expenses. I think that is just the price of operating a business in Ontario and North America."