Neighbors of U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson plant in Braddock want clearer information about the implications of a proposed plant upgrade, as Braddock Borough debates a municipal sewer connection the company wants to support the work.
Their concern, expressed at public meetings and ahead of a U.S. Steel open house held Thursday, comes after Braddock council last month tabled a resolution on the sewer connection, seeking more information. North Braddock is also expected to consider a connection to that borough’s sewers in the coming weeks.
“U.S. Steel used to mean jobs and stability, but now it also meant gray skies and cloudy smoke from the mills,” said Patricia Kelley, Braddock council vice president. “We understand the economic benefit from the investment would be beneficial, but we want to assure you that our concern is the health and safety of our residents.”
U.S. Steel announced last month that it would invest up to $2.5 billion into its Mon Valley Works, including the Edgar Thomson plant in Braddock and North Braddock, about one year after the American steel icon was acquired by Tokyo-based Nippon Steel. The company says the upgrades will reduce emissions and implement a “cleaner, more efficient” production process in the Mon Valley.
U.S. Steel’s Mon Valley Works is made up of three sites: the Edgar Thomson plant, the Clairton Coke Works and the Irvin Plant in West Mifflin.
A large part of the investment would be the construction of a new hot strip mill at Edgar Thomson, to replace the existing mill at the Irvin plant. Hot strip mills roll semi-finished slabs into thin sheets that can be rolled into coils.
The connection into Braddock and North Braddock’s sewer lines is a “routine regulatory matter” that covers “the addition of basic sanitary facilities for on-site workers,” U.S. Steel spokesperson Andrew Fulton said in a statement.
Braddock councilors said they wanted more information about the process when they tabled the resolution last month. Councilor Collette Walsh said in an interview that she wants a full account of the project’s repercussions, including its impact on air quality.
“We don’t have the answers. We don’t know the right questions to ask … I’m not going to vote on something if I don’t even know what the right question is,” she said.
Fulton said in a statement that the hot strip mill permitting process will continue, even if the boroughs don’t approve the permits.
“If either council votes no, we will continue working with them in good faith to resolve any good faith concerns,” Fulton said.
Mark Thompson, a West Chester-based attorney specializing in municipal and land use law, said the company could also sue one or both boroughs if the permits aren’t approved.
At North Braddock’s council meeting last month, residents voiced concern over what they saw as a lack of information regarding the environmental impacts of the U.S. Steel’s planned upgrades.
The Breathe Project and North Braddock Residents for Our Future, a local environmental advocacy group, hosted an event outside of the company’s open house, where residents spoke.
Braddock Councilor Chardae Jones said that the open house — which featured company representatives and information detailing the company’s Mon Valley operations — didn’t address her lingering questions.
“What is the environmental impact? How would it affect the community? What are they willing to do to mitigate some of that impact?” she asked.
Moving the polluted zone
Edith Abeyta is the founder of North Braddock Residents for Our Future, an environmental advocacy group. At North Braddock’s meeting last month, she voiced concern over the pollution impacts of the project, which she said haven’t been studied enough.
Abeyta worries about the possibility that both strip mills may be running at the same time as the company works to shift production.
“What I am concerned about is harm on a lot of different levels — air pollution harm, public health harm, social-psychological harm,” she said in an interview. “There’s going to be a period of time where [the mills] are both going to ensure they’re both working. What’s the accounting for that?”
Fulton said that after the Irvin hot strip mill’s permanent retirement, the pollutants associated with regional air quality and health concerns — like fine particulate matter — will be reduced.
“The geographic shift in equipment location is real, and U.S. Steel does not minimize it,” Fulton said in a statement.
Together, the Mon Valley Works produce around one-quarter of Allegheny County’s greenhouse gasses, according to the county’s in-progress climate action plan.
According to an analysis from Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab — a research unit of the school’s robotics institute — moving the hot strip mill from Irvin would expand Edgar Thomson’s primary pollution area to include nearly 5,000 more residents.
Ana Hoffman, the lab’s air quality program manager, said she worries about the health-related impacts of a larger primary pollution zone, particularly those associated with the fine particulate matter emitted from Edgar Thomson. Studies have linked exposure to particulate matter under 10 micrograms with aggravated asthma and nonfatal heart attacks.
“It’ll look like more missed days of school due to asthma attacks,” Hoffman said. “It will look like a heavily smell-filled home for people who already have trouble sleeping at night.”
U.S. Steel’s Fulton said the new hot strip mill would result in a decrease in emissions per ton of steel produced as compared to the existing hot strip mill at Irvin. He said in a statement that consideration of the impact of moving the hot strip mill is “built into the project from the ground up.”
“Braddock is an Environmental Justice community, and we take that designation seriously,” he said. “The decision to deploy the most stringent available pollution controls … is precisely what that commitment requires.”
Steelworkers largely living elsewhere
The company estimates the upgrades will generate a $1.7 billion economic impact for the state through spending on things such as wages and construction costs. Its investment will also preserve the roughly 3,000 jobs at Mon Valley Works.
Only 4% of Mon Valley Works employees — or 134 people — live in the communities immediately home to the works or neighbor the facilities, like Braddock and North Braddock, according to a CREATE Lab report that used Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics data. More than half, or 1,734 employees, live outside of Allegheny County, according to the report.
In a statement, Fulton said that information regarding half of employees living outside of Allegheny County was “generally correct.”
U.S. Steel submitted a permit application for the new hot strip mill in December. The county’s Air Quality Program is drafting U.S. Steel’s permit for the hot strip mill, according to Allegheny County Health Department spokesperson Ronnie Das.
The company debuted plans to invest $11 billion into its domestic footprint in November, shortly after it was acquired by Nippon, but hasn’t fully laid out how it intends to divvy up the investment across its holdings.
The company plans to invest $3 billion into its Big River Steel site in Arkansas. Of that, $1.9 billion will go toward a direct reduced iron plant — a steelmaking process that produces high-quality iron by removing oxygen from iron ore pellets using reduced gasses, such as hydrogen or natural gas, rather than melting it in a blast furnace. That iron is a key ingredient in steel.
The Arkansas plant is also home to a mini mill, which utilizes electric arc furnace technology, a more sustainable alternative to the blast furnaces that power the Mon Valley Works.
The push toward a less emissions-intensive steelmaking process comes as Allegheny County is working on a climate action plan that urges U.S. Steel to phase out its current processes in favor of carbon capture and direct reduced iron technology.
Hoffman said that she would like to see the company bring the electric arc furnace and direct reduced iron technologies to Pittsburgh. “The only way that we would continue to be a part of the history and story of steel as a region would have to be cleaner steel technology in Pittsburgh,” she said.
Lucas Dufalla is the Southern Communities reporter at Pittsburgh’s Public Source and can be reached at lucas@publicsource.org.
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