That dull red pall doesn't hang over Geneva Steel anymore. That malodorous blend of sulfur, nitrogen oxides and coke-oven emissions doesn't permeate Utah Valley as often as it used to. The white clouds that billow from smokestacks are mostly steam.
Company officials point to those visible signs as evidence that their $120 million modernization and pollution reduction plan at the 50-year-old plant is working."It think it's very difficult, if not impossible, to dispute that what we've done has had an impact," said Mitch Haws, vice president for corporate communications. "It's having a tangible effect on the air quality."
A slight majority of Utah County residents apparently agree.
A Dan Jones & Associates poll found 51 percent perceive Geneva has definitely or probably improved air quality through its recent modernization projects. Another 35 percent say the mill definitely or probably hasn't done much to curb pollution. The remaining 14 percent didn't offer an opinion. Jones surveyed 401 county residents Dec. 5 to Dec. 10.
Maybe the TV and radio advertising campaign Geneva launched last year to show how the plant has freshened up helped shape people's perception.
In the ads, actors portray people who take part in an experiment similar to those soft drink taste tests. The blindfolded participants are whisked to smelly locations and asked where they are. They easily identify a locker room, a rodeo arena and the Great Salt Lake. But when placed next to Geneva's blast furnace building, the sniffers can't figure it out.
Geneva Steel is a cleaner mill today than it was six years ago when carbon monoxide and fine particulate, or PM10, pollution readings in the valley were off the charts in frequency and intensity. Exceed-an-ces of federal air quality standards have declined the past few years.
Residents' eyes and noses apparently aren't deceiving them. Hard data show improved air quality. The level of fine particulates, or PM10, hasn't exceeded federal standards at the Lindon monitor in 23 months, the longest period ever measured without the level rising above 150 micrograms. There was one exceedance of carbon monoxide standard last year.
"I'm not willing to say at this point it's a miracle, but it's certainly significant," Bob Dalley, manager of the state Division of Air Quality's air monitoring station.
While weather conditions play a large role in the quality of the air, Dalley said he can't totally write off the good pollution readings to that. "Something significant has happened and I don't think it's all in the meteorology," he said.
Utah's PM10 control plan drafted in the late 1980s designated Geneva as accountable for 55 percent of the county's fine particulates, a pollutant that can cause serious respiratory illnesses.
K.C. Shaw, Geneva environmental engineer, said the company has whittled that to less than 25 percent. Total emissions of various pollutants at the mill dropped from 15,118 tons in 1988 to 4,082 tons the past year.
Much of the improvement can be traced to Geneva's ongoing modernization projects.
Geneva replaced its old open-hearth blast furnaces with an $80 million basic oxygen furnace, or Q-BOP, in 1991. The blast furnaces burned tons of iron oxide that, when pumped into the air through four smokestacks running 24 hours a day, cast a pinkish haze over the plant. There's only one stack with the Q-BOP, which blows only water vapor 15 minutes each hour, Shaw said.
"Everything else is totally enclosed," he said.
Geneva also built a coke oven gas sulfur removal system, which Shaw called the company's "biggest hitter" in the battle to reduce pollution. When coal is converted to coke, the fuel for making steel, it gives off a flammable gas. The gas contains sulfur, which when burned as fuel for other plant processes is transformed into sulfur dioxide, a contributor to PM10.
"The sulfur plant is the biggest improvement. But you don't see it visibly because it didn't come out of a stack," Shaw said.
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Additional Information
Utah County Poll
Geneva Steel has spent $120 million attempting to reduce pollution at its mill. From your perception, would you say the air quality has improved or not improved?
Definitely 22%
Probably 29%
Probably not 23%
Definitely not 12%
Don't know 14%
Poll conducted Dec. 5-10, 1995. Margin of error +/- 5% on interviews of 401 residents. Conducted by Dan Jones & Associates, an independent organization founded in 1980, polls for the Deseret News and KSL. Its clients include other organizations and some political candidates.