Before he moved to Clairton, John Perryman led a Walter Mitty life: a teenage hatmaker in Seattle, then itinerant dock worker and eventual union head, traveling everywhere from Saudi Arabia to the Soviet Union before retiring to Pittsburgh and co-founding an orphanage in Ethiopia. Perryman “has experienced the American work scene from the bottom up,” reads a newspaper clipping he keeps in storage, “and can spot a phony a mile away.”
Then one day in 2019, he collapsed walking up the stairs. “My doctor told me if I want to live I’d better get out of Clairton,” Perryman said from home one recent afternoon, surrounded by artwork and kombucha brewing paraphernalia.
Now two batteries strapped to his chest power a mechanical heart pump for 17 hours at a time before an alarm goes off and he has 15 minutes to swap them out.
Soon after his surgery Perryman was deposed by lawyers representing U.S. Steel in a citizens’ lawsuit over air pollution from the Clairton Coke Works, which locals and environmental advocates blame for the area’s alarming rates of cancer, lung and heart disease. That suit ended Jan. 29 with a historic settlement: the largest penalty extracted under the Clean Air Act in state history.
Perryman wasn’t sure he would see the day. “I was wondering if I was going to die before the end of the deposition,” he said.
He’s still wondering what the proposed settlement will ultimately yield.
Pending EPA approval, the settlement promises to bring $5 million to public health projects near three polluting U.S. Steel plants lining the Mon Valley. Crucially, the money will be dispersed in a novel way: All but $500,000 will flow through the Allegheny County Economic Development department and the Jefferson Regional Foundation*, a grantmaker active in communities around Jefferson Hospital, Clairton’s nearest major health facility. Each will take 5% of the money to pay for administering the funds over five years.
The fine print — what exactly the money could be used for, and how it will be dispersed at community-level — has given locals like Perryman cautious optimism, tempered by years of permit violations and penalty fines they say have never reached the affected communities.
More than a fine
The settlement stems from a 2018 fire which took out the pollution control system at Clairton and the connected Edgar Thomson and Irvin plants up the Mon Valley. For 102 consecutive days after the fire the largest coke works in North America became “a doomsday machine with no off-switch,” according to Ashleigh Deemer, deputy director of PennEnvironment, one of two environmental groups suing U.S. Steel for breaking its pollution permits.
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As well as community funding, the settlement also contains other non-pecuniary provisions:
- After retiring three coke batteries at Clairton this time last year, U.S. Steel will have six months to permanently close battery number 15, which contains over one-tenth of the works’ remaining ovens. Though the battery has been closed since the end of 2019, in a statement announcing the settlement U.S. Steel said the closure “may lead to additional emissions reductions.” A representative of the company did not respond to a request for more details.
- U.S. Steel will have to use cleaner gas for heating coke to meet a more stringent permit limit for hydrogen sulfide, which smells like rotten eggs. “That’ll be an immediate pollution reduction that can be experienced by everybody,” said Jay Walker, a community organizer with Pittsburgh-based non-profit Clean Air Council.
- Internally, the company has also set aside $37 million for a suite of plant improvements and upgrades. That includes, however, $17.5 million which has already been spent since the fire on improvements and replacements. U.S. Steel will complete two more upgrades in the future, estimated to cost $19.5 million.
- The settlement also creates a new framework for penalizing illegal pollution caused by the same type of plant failure, setting out exact fines by day and severity. According to lawyer Matthew Donohue, representing residents, this will nix U.S. Steel’s alleged “pay to pollute” strategy. The company will still be able to appeal penalties for other kinds of permit violations — which it did, the same day the company announced the settlement.
The whole package adds up to $42 million, including the $17.5 million already spent, but U.S. Steel characterizes only $500,000 of it as a fine. The remaining $4.5 million of community funding “is part of the agreement but not a fine,” a company spokesperson wrote in response to questions.
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An improvement on the ‘punch card’?
Six months before the fire, the Allegheny County Health Department handed down what was then the largest single fine in its history, one of 20 fines since 2018, totaling over $10 million. U.S. Steel is also currently fighting a separate class action lawsuit brought in the Court of Common Pleas on behalf of residents of 23 municipalities by plaintiffs who say the fire robbed them of the right to enjoy their properties after a health advisory warned people to stay inside. U.S. Steel “intends to vigorously defend” against the suit, according to their latest annual report.
The week after the settlement, the EPA also cut by a quarter the permissible levels of so-called PM 2.5 pollution — particulate matter small enough to more easily cross the lung’s walls — effectively putting all of Mon Valley in violation as soon as the new standards come into effect. U.S. Steel indicated that it was reviewing the implications and pledged to work with the EPA “to ensure that this rule balances the environmental and industrial needs of the region.”
Advocates said new regulations won’t make a difference based on U.S. Steel’s track record. “Rules are good and these are stricter, but if they’re not going to comply then it doesn’t really matter,” said Sinan Dogan, a community health researcher with Valley Clean Air Now [VCAN].
“They’ve got a punch card,” said Deemer, after a Jan. 29 press conference announcing the settlement at Allegheny County Courthouse. “They’ve paid millions and millions.”
In the recent past, the ostensibly community-directed money from U.S. Steel’s penalty punch card has been administered from the U.S. Steel Community Benefit Trust, established in 2020. The trust specifies that any payout must be “anticipated to improve, protect, or reduce the risk to public health or the environment,” but a WESA analysis of spending found an overwhelming majority of money was awarded to cover recreation, public safety or infrastructure expenditures: from police cars to cameras to maintenance of local officials’ offices.
This time will be different, said Donohue. “There are contracts on both of these funds that the recipients must spend this money on local projects that address public health or air quality in the Mon Valley,” he said at the press conference, adding that both individuals and nonprofits would be able to apply for money.
While administered by new groups, however, the consent decree in the latest settlement contains similar wording used in the creation of the Benefit Trust. Where the 2020 trust allows penalty money to pay for the programs “improving the well-being of residents,” the new consent decree also allows projects supporting “public … welfare,” not just “public health” — a broad enough definition of community good to include, for example, police cars.
Locals also begrudged the Benefit Trust for meeting and allocating funds in private, a situation which appears only partly changed by the new settlement. While the Jefferson Regional Foundation must solicit external proposals, the county can use the money for its own projects “supporting public health and welfare.”
Asked how they would administer their respective halves of the penalty, Jefferson Regional Foundation CEO Trisha Gadson said local nonprofits, but not individual community members, would be able to apply through the foundation’s established grant-making channels.
In an emailed statement, county spokesperson Abigail Gardner wrote: “Once the settlement is finalized, the Economic Development department will work to create a process that follows guidelines dictated by the settlement,” but declined to provide specifics on what might be considered eligible projects.
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Not ‘a never-ending pot’
The difference between this settlement and past penalties could be critical for local community groups like VCAN, which buys and distributes air filters in Clairton.
In a small back room of the local community center rented by VCAN, two kinds of air filter are stacked to the ceiling in cardboard boxes. One, a cylinder about the size of a wastepaper bin, for homes and personal use, retails for $99.99. The other, boxy and much bigger, is for communal spaces or people with diseases that make them particularly vulnerable to air pollution and costs between $715 and $855.
But VCAN is running out of money even as it struggles to decide who, in Clairton, qualifies as vulnerable. “It’s so hard to tell around here because everyone’s so sick,” said Qiyam Ansari, VCAN’s chair, before a board meeting the week of the settlement. “You either get sick and die or you get sick and leave. New people that come also get sick, so that just adds to the pot of people that need [air filters].” The waiting list is currently over 100.
VCAN has never received any funding from U.S. Steel, the county or local government, relying instead on foundation grants which are dwindling. “Private funders don’t want to fund this program because the need is so high,” said Ansari. “They see it as pouring money into a never-ending pot.” Without more money, he estimates VCAN can continue to distribute filters for three more months.
Previous U.S. Steel payments don’t provide much hope, said VCAN’s Dogan, but there are not many other options. At their board meeting the settlement topped a short list to keep VCAN running. “We’re stuck in a slush fund loop,” said Dogan, “and hopefully we’re going to get out of it.”
While VCAN begins applying to the Jefferson Regional Foundation, its members said the Economic Development department had not returned their calls by last week.
Perryman attended the VCAN meeting in the same knit kufi hat he wore to the press conference earlier that week. Long before VCAN existed, he first bought an air filter for a neighbor with his Social Security check, allowing them to breathe cleaner air indoors while deciding whether to risk it outside.
“I’m pretty sure that the air purifiers that we already passed out will save some lives,” he said. “And the ones that we pass out in the future will save even more.”
*Jefferson Regional Foundation provides funding to PublicSource.
Daniel Shailer is a climate and environmental reporter and can be reached at danshailer@btinternet.com and on Twitter.
This story was fact-checked by Delaney Rauscher Adams.
