I don't know if alive and well is a proper description; there's no ironmaking happening there anymore. The only thing operating is DTE's coke plant with a skeleton crew.
@@ChosenWon Tom, the steam is from the quenching tower where the newly made coke is sent to get cooled down. A huge amount of water from the river is dumped onto a railcar of hot coke at the bottom of the tower and the steam rises up and out. The trucks and piles of coal you see is what the coke is made from.
I used to work the ore docks on Zug for National Steel years ago and also worked at DTE EES (the coke plant). I pretty much wrote the story on Zug Island on wikipedia.
Question! That fire, is it set intentionally? Why? To burn off the noxious gasses? It seems that it should be a source of energy in some way, IDK, just wondering!!
Intentional, the fire coming out of the stack is most likely the plant burning off coke oven gas which is a byproduct of the production of coke at the coke ovens.
