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SunCoke incident under investigation

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By Eric Schwartzberg, Staff Writer 6:40 PM Tuesday, December 6, 2011

MIDDLETOWN — Suzann Hayes awoke last Thursday morning to the remnants of a white cloud that had dusted the yard of her Finley Street home with a fine, powdery substance.

“As it went over it was almost like it was snowing and it stuck on everything and just stayed there,” Hayes said. “It didn’t last but 15 minutes. My car looked like someone had thrown mashed potato flakes all over it.”

The incident began around 8:30 a.m., according to the Southwest Ohio Air Quality Agency, a division of the Hamilton County Department of Environmental Services. That’s when SunCoke Energy’s Middletown Operation blew extremely small white particles “like talcum powder” into the air up, where they drifted half a mile north of the site, said Mike Ploetz of the SOAQA.

The agency and SunCoke launched investigations into the incident, the first to be linked to the new facility, Ploetz said.

The collected samples are still being analyzed by both parties, but the material itself poses no health risk, he said.

“Our belief is that it’s fly ash,” Ploetz said. “Fly ash is a byproduct from burning coal ... and fly ash is not hazardous.”

SunCoke, which provides coke — a steelmaking raw material — to AK Steel, is conducting its own investigation, including why it occurred and what the particulate matter is, Ploetz said.

The most immediate question residents had concerned what the particulate matter would do to their vehicles, according to Robert Parnell, SunCoke’s general manager.

Parnell said the particulate was so light that it could be removed from a vehicle by driving it several miles or leaving it out in the rain.

Parnell, who said he expects to report to the Southwest Ohio Air Quality Agency within the next week, said Thursday’s incident was “a temporary situation that we do not expect occur with any frequency.”

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