Clairton native Melanie Meade stands in her home’s backyard, with U.S Steel’s Clairton Coke Works in the background. (Shane Dunlap | TribLive )
Story by JUSTIN VELLUCCI
Feb. 4, 2024
Melanie Meade monitors plumes of pollution.
Her hilltop home overlooks Clairton Coke Works, the largest coke-manufacturing facility in North America — and Allegheny County’s top source of air pollution.
From that tree-dotted perch, Meade uses her iPhone almost daily to photograph emissions spewing from the 123-year-old plant’s coke ovens. Then she shares them with Allegheny County health officials, creating a kind of pollution record.
On some days — like this past Christmas morning — the loosely formed pillars drifting upward from the 392-acre facility are so brown or opaque that Meade can’t see through them to trees on the other side of the Monongahela River.
But her concerns aren’t just about how the plumes look. Meade worries about what the unceasing chemical emissions mean for the health of area residents, who already are suffering.
A 2020 study showed outdoor air pollution has contributed to more than one in every five Clairton children developing asthma — a rate three times higher than the national average.
In 2013, a University of Pittsburgh report on air pollution identified coke oven emissions as one of the “top cancer drivers” in the Pittsburgh region. In a four-state area, Allegheny County was the epicenter for cancer risk from hazardous air pollutants, according to that same study. Clairton, it said, had the highest risk of all.
Coke oven emissions typically include cadmium and arsenic, elements the National Cancer Institute has flagged as carcinogens.
The ovens in Clairton also emit hydrogen sulfide, a flammable gas with a pungent, rotten-egg odor. It can irritate the eyes and respiratory system, and cause dizziness, headache, weakness, irritability and insomnia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though it is not classified as a cancer-causing agent.
Meade is frustrated that despite constant monitoring, government action and seven-figure fines — such as a $2.2 million penalty levied in December — nothing seems to put an end to the plant’s chronic air pollution violations.
Just last week, the plant’s owner, U.S. Steel, entered into an agreement with the Allegheny County Health Department to address various environmental problems, including what clean-air advocates said was more than 100 consecutive days of illegal emissions of sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide.
“I do not think a fine or a new decree will change their over-exceedances and disregard for our public health,” said Meade, 49, a fellow with the Black Appalachian Coalition, a Dayton, Ohio-based advocacy group and nonprofit. “It’s evident that all anyone in power cares about is money — not quality of life.”
Meade believes fighting the constant pollution is an uphill battle — but a worthy one.
“It’s really difficult for a community that’s always been told, ‘This is what money smells like,’” she said.
The Clairton works is Pennsylvania’s only operating coke-manufacturing facility. Nestled on the western shore of a bend in the Monongahela River, it produces coke, a fuel critical for steel-making.
In the manufacturing process, the plant emits hydrogen sulfide when it “pushes” coke from ovens to railroad cars, when it quenches hot coke with water or when waste gas from the coke-making process is heated and trapped between hot coal and the oven top.
A hydrogen sulfide monitor about two miles downwind of the mill showed that the plant on Clairton’s State Street exceeded state limits on 299 days between Jan. 1, 2020, and the end of last November.
In late December, the Allegheny County Health Department fined U.S. Steel more than $2.2 million for repeatedly violating state emission standards. The steelmaker is appealing the fine, its 10th pollution-related penalty since 2018.
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, whose district includes the Clairton Coke Works, wants these financial penalties, dwarfed by U.S. Steel’s profits, to hit harder in the steel giant’s wallet.
“I’m glad to see U.S. Steel be held accountable for their unlawful polluting, but fines of $2.2 million barely represent a drop in the bucket compared to the costs borne by the people of Western Pennsylvania — who face some of the highest rates of respiratory disease in the country,” Lee told TribLive.
Lee said Pennsylvanians voted to send her to Washington, D.C., to fight for environmental justice. What’s needed, she said, is “to ensure corporations face accountability beyond fines that are too small to meaningfully change their behavior.”
On Jan. 26, U.S. Steel announced it had settled a legal dispute with county officials to address a December 2018 fire at its Clairton facility that crippled its pollution controls.
After the fire, sulfur dioxide levels spiked. Inhaling that chemical — a colorless gas at room temperature — severely irritates the lungs and can cause increased problems for people with asthma, the CDC said. It also can irritate the eyes and skin.
Under the agreement with the county, U.S. Steel must invest nearly $20 million to upgrade coke-oven gas cleaning infrastructure. Another $4.5 million will support local communities affected by the incidents. The company also will pay $500,000 to the Allegheny County Clean Air Fund.
“We all deserve clean air, and when polluters violate clean air standards, they must be held accountable,” said Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato.
The American Lung Association also applauded the penalties connected to the Jan. 26 agreement.
“The coke and steel mills are major sources of pollution in the region that is linked to a range of adverse health effects in exacerbation of asthma and premature death,” said Kevin Stewart, the association’s director of environmental health.
“This action will improve the air quality in the region and lung health will benefit.”
Much of the region’s hydrogen sulfide comes from the Clairton works.
Allegheny County tracks the gaseous output with its hydrogen sulfide monitors in Liberty and North Braddock. They’re the only two in the state, according to Lauren Camarda, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. Their data is available through an online dashboard.
Emitting too much hydrogen sulfide led to the Clairton plant’s latest penalty. The $2.2 million fine’s most costly component: 82 emission violations deemed “major,” county documents show.
During “major severity” incidents in 2022 and 2023, the hydrogen sulfide emissions from the coke works exceeded 8.25 parts per billion — more than 1½ times the permitted limit.
It doesn’t take much hydrogen sulfide to outstrip the legal limit, which is the equivalent of 5 drops of water in a swimming pool, the EPA said.
EPA regulations for coke ovens do not set caps on hydrogen sulfide. Pennsylvania, however, does. The state established its own air-quality standards for the chemical in the 1960s, Camarda said.
Regulators drafted the state’s emissions standards 50 years ago after noticing the color changing on lead-based paints on home exteriors near burning coal refuse piles, Camarda said. They realized hydrogen sulfide was to blame.
The standards by the Air Pollution Commission, a predecessor of the state DEP, became law on Sept. 10, 1971.
The county’s efforts to rein in the Clairton plant’s pollution go beyond the financial penalty.
As part of the recent fine, U.S. Steel must submit a plan to the Allegheny County Health Department on what actions it will take to prevent future emission exceedances of hydrogen sulfide in Clairton.
Failure to comply could result in penalties of up to $25,000 per violation per day — the maximum penalty state law allows.
U.S. Steel characterized the consent decree as collaborative, not adversarial.
“U.S. Steel attempted to work with the (health) department, but the department unilaterally terminated those discussions,” spokeswoman Amanda Malkowski told TribLive in a prepared statement. “U.S. Steel values our shared environment and the communities in which we operate, and we prefer to work with the department collaboratively in these efforts.”
“The enforcement order speaks for itself,” responded Abigail Gardner, Innamorato’s spokeswoman.
Time after time, health officials have punished U.S. Steel for polluting the air.
In the past two years alone, Allegheny County and the federal Environmental Protection Agency have fined U.S. Steel a total of nearly $12 million for violating air pollution laws at its Pittsburgh-area plants.
The recent $2.2 million fine is less than a quarter of 1% of U.S. Steel’s 2023 net earnings of $895 million.
Nippon Steel, Japan’s largest steelmaker, announced a $14.9 billion acquisition of U.S. Steel in mid-December. The United Steelworkers union and several Pittsburgh-area elected leaders blasted the proposed sale, which is expected to close by the end of September pending regulatory approval.
The federal Clean Air Act does not apply to hydrogen sulfide. Pennsylvania restricts penalties meted out for air emissions, including for hydrogen sulfide. The state Air Pollution Control Act and other laws cap some fines for emissions violations at $25,000 per day per incident.
U.S. Steel officials said they are responding to emission concerns.
Malkowski said the steelmaker has spent $100 million annually and worldwide since at least 2019 on “environmental compliance,” which includes testing, sampling, monitoring, inspections and equipment.
A 2019 agreement reached between the health department and U.S. Steel started funneling 90% of the recent fines into a community trust to improve Mon Valley neighborhoods. Lincoln, Glassport, Clairton, Liberty and Port Vue have used trust money to buy public works trucks, rescue boats and radios for police officers and paramedics.
That agreement also called for U.S. Steel to invest $200 million in improvements to the Clairton mill’s coke batteries, as well as upgrades to emission controls and plant infrastructure, Malkowski said.
Some of those improvements have been completed, she said. U.S. Steel has shuttered aging coke batteries to slash emissions, converted two diesel-fueled locomotives at Pittsburgh-area mills over to battery power and is testing new technology to capture carbon-dioxide emissions at its Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock.
“Environmental stewardship is one of U.S. Steel’s guiding principles,” Malkowski said. “We are committed to environmental progress and strive for 100% compliance with all federal, state, and local agencies’ rules, regulations, and permit conditions.”
Health officials have stated there’s no doubt about where the county’s hydrogen sulfide emissions originate.
A 2022 study found the emission readings at the Liberty monitor “can be attributed entirely to emissions originating at U.S. Steel’s Clairton plant.”
Though Pittsburgh earned its first-ever “passing grade” on an air quality report card that same year, the American Lung Association still ranked Pittsburgh’s air as the 14th most polluted in the country.
The group’s 2023 State of the Air Report found ozone readings and levels of particulate pollution in the air had dramatically improved in Allegheny County during the past 20 years. The Pittsburgh area, however, still registered in the bottom 20 — out of 223 metropolitan areas — for 24-hour particle pollution in the air.
Clairton Mayor Rich Lattanzi retired in 2021 from U.S. Steel, where he worked at the Irvin Works in West Mifflin. He defends the emissions record of his hometown’s plant. He has warned health officials to not “impose new or modified emissions limits” on the coke works.
A stricter emission standard “sets them up for failure,” Lattanzi said. New standards would be “just over the top for this 100-year-plus mill.”
Lattanzi did not answer any questions about the coke works’ emissions record or how money from the 2019 settlement’s community trust has been used.
Clean-air advocate Patrick Campbell doesn’t believe emissions from U.S. Steel’s plants in the region are abating.
“Things are not improving at these Mon Valley facilities,” said Campbell, executive director of Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP), a Regent Square-based environmental advocacy group.
Campbell said 2023’s hydrogen sulfide emissions at Clairton Coke Works were just two violations away from topping 2017 figures, which he called the worst on record. He praised the recent fine levied by the county but said a long-term plan is needed.
“To us, this is the first step in a process,” Campbell said. “But it strikes me as a good first step.”
Art Thomas knows what kind of pollution comes out of U.S. Steel facilities.
A retired 36-year veteran of the Irvin Works, Thomas is a member of a group called Valley Clean Air Now and has lived in Clairton for 75 of his 79 years.
He pointed with approval to the remediation work Norfolk Southern conducted in East Palestine, Ohio, after a train carrying hazardous materials derailed there Feb. 3, 2023. The controlled burn of toxic chemicals that followed sent a large plume of black smoke into the air that could be seen for miles. It’s unknown how long its impact will be felt.
“And we’ve been exposed to this stuff for how many years?” Thomas asked. “This stuff’s been going up and coming down here for 100 years.”
Meade, too, is rooted deeply in Clairton.
Her family has called the “City of Prayer” home for five or six generations; her paternal grandmother owned land that predated Clairton’s 1903 incorporation.
She also is tied to the coke works. Her grandfather worked there in the first half of the 20th century, and her elder brother in the second.
Meade, who today studies how to use natural remedies to heal the body, said it wasn’t until she left Clairton that she learned about climate change and environmental justice.
In 1992, while a student at James Wood High School in Winchester, Va., about 75 miles outside Washington, D.C., Meade heard then-U.S. Sen. Al Gore address climate change. It fueled her to become an environmental watchdog.
Meade frets that climate-change messages don’t resonate with many in Clairton.
“The students at Clairton schools don’t know what environmental justice is,” said Meade, whose 14-year-old son attends classes online. “They don’t have conversations about climate change, about how to affect climate change.”
More than 36,000 people live within three miles of Clairton Coke Works, according to the Penn Environment Research and Policy Center. Seven public schools operate in the same footprint.
Meade believes U.S. Steel keeps making the conscious choice to pollute — and measures like the recent legal settlement don’t do much to stop them.
“The health department is actually helping U.S. Steel pretty up their business for selling,” she said. “That should be a violation of my human and public rights. This is absurd.”
Justin Vellucci is a TribLive reporter covering crime and public safety in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. A longtime freelance journalist and former reporter for the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press, he worked as a general assignment reporter at the Trib from 2006 to 2009 and returned in 2022. He can be reached at jvellucci@triblive.com.