ArcelorMittal Dofasco fined after black soot covers neighbourhood

ArcelorMittal Dofasco found itself paying another fine for another emissions incident.

Dofasco was fined over $162 000 after a blast furnace bleeder pop sent black soot from one of their blast furnaces onto a north end Hamilton neighbourhood in early 2015. ArcelorMittal Dofasco made $1.8 billion in 2016, so the penalty won’t make a dent financially, but Linda Lukasik from Environment Hamilton says the optics is what the company’s conscious of.

“Maybe it’s not enough of a deterrent but I think the community being aware that it was bad enough that they were fined hopefully also motivates companies to do better.”

But this isn’t the first time the company’s been fined for similar incidents. In 2014 Dofasco paid nearly $400 000 in fines and nearly $100 000 in victim surcharges after it violated several provincial air quality standards in 2012.

Since then, Dofasco reported that it set up a team of experts to fast track a process to eliminate similar eruptions and emissions.